“Secret ingredient.”

That was the phrase of the day for competitors at the King Cotton Crawfish Boil on Starkville’s Main Street Saturday afternoon. As I walked around the tents, greeting the eight teams and getting ready to try their crawfish, the words just kept coming up.

Whether it was a team’s first time competing or if they came every year, no one wanted to give more than a hint or two about their highly classified recipes. They were out to win the approval of the judges – and the crowd of hundreds that swarmed the street to get their mudbugs.

Paige Watson, Main Street director for the Greater Starkville Development Partnership, told me the event included 2,400 pounds of crawfish.

With so many crawfish in people’s hands and mouths, and no one wanting to spill the beans, the question became: How would the teams stand out?

Chris House, of the Boudreaux and Thibodeaux team, said it was the team’s first time participating in the boil, and it was his first time cooking crawfish ever.

He stayed cryptic about ingredients used to make his crawfish stand out. All he would say about his recipe? “It’s good.” His crawfish recipe may be in Witness Protection.

Meanwhile, Jerome Nettles of The Ragin’ Agents team also kept his recipe on strict lockdown, but for a different reason. He said his team has been boiling in the competition for the past eight years, serving a similar recipe each time. Last year, the team took second place. This year, he was gunning for the crown.

A few crawfish cooks shared more vague information about their seasonings.

Jack McCarty and Wes Gordon, of the Frostbite team, said they were going for a blend that was not extra spicy, just extra flavorful, focusing on garlic and butter flavors to appeal to the crowds. Still, they wouldn’t give away anything to compromise their blend.

Meanwhile, Perry Florence Sr. of the Codaray team said he was going for something with a little heat and a little sweet on his crawfish blend.

But he brought an extra crowd-pleaser to rake in voters’ tokens: fried catfish. And I have to say, it was definitely a big selling point.

That was one element I hadn’t considered coming into the boil: fixings. Teams each served their fixings slightly differently. Some included potatoes, corn and mushrooms laid out buffet style for individual eaters to pick up, while others mixed them all together. And then, there were the more unique additions: flavored sausages or jalapenos, or whatever else the cook fancied.

Other boilers were focused on a different element: peelability. Both Austin Check, of the Getting Sum Tail team, and Chris Litman of the Pike County Crawdawgs mentioned it to me explicitly as one of their focuses during the boil.

Wading through serving after serving of crawfish, things started to blend together just a little bit. I’m not going to lie, as my waistline grew, so did the fog that took over my mind. But either way, by the end of the day, I knew who I was giving my vote to.

I won’t say which team’s crawfish were the best to me. That’s confidential. But I’ll say, watching the crowd going to and from the crawfish tents, talking and eating, it felt like everybody had won in some way or another.

At the end of the day, when I was slightly sunburnt and in a food coma, I got the news that Codaray Construction had taken home the crown and the people’s choice award, while Boil One Down took First Loser. Pike County Crawfish was also represented among the victors for Best Decoration and Best Taste. And hats off to all of them. They served up some delicious mudbugs.

But I don’t know if I’m going to eat even one more crawfish tail this season. I think I’m tapped out for the year. At least, until the next King Cotton Crawfish Boil rolls back around.

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