Y for

Yabbies

This is a post I have been waiting for almost the whole alphabet to share.

Yabbies are a fresh water crayfish and they live in dams, waterholes and rivers all over Australia.

In the cities they are considered by most to be a 'special occasion' purchase, much the same as lobster. The reason for this is because we arent allowed to catch them in nets, so they aren't always available in retail outlets. Mostly, each individual is allowed 10 Yabbies per day unless you are purchasing them from commercial Yabby Farms. They are expensive to farm as they are migratory, you could wake up one morning to find the entire yabby population of your dam has moved out to greener pastures. Most of the Yabbies commercially grown in Australia are sold to restaurants and to Asian markets.  But out in the country areas, yabbies are not so 'fancy'.

 

The paternal side of my family comes from the far south coast of NSW, most lived in the nearby town but we had quite a few relatives who owned large dairy farms with massive dams on them.

One of my favourite things to do down there as a child was to go yabbying down at one of the dams with an old pair of pantyhose or nyolon stockings, a bit of string and a small lump of rotten meat.

We would put the meat in the toe of the stocking, tie a long bit of string to it and throw it into the dam. Yabbies love meat, especially if it has a strong odour.

One of my older cousins would have a small fire going and would put the billy on to boil. As we caught a yabby we would drop it into the boiling water for a few minutes and then fish it out and eat it right there on the dam wall.

Sometimes, when swimming in a dam, if you put your foot down into the mud at the bottom of the dam you would catch a yabby with your big toe. Painful to say the least but if you could get to shore with the yabby attached – you had a snack.

Yabbies are nocturnal, they will eat anything from the animal/aquatic/vegetable worlds and they make pretty good pets. I myself couldn't keep one, I love eating them too much.

The taste is sweet and the flesh is delicate, once you have tried a yabby a prawn or a lobster pales into insignificance.

If we go out for dinner and Yabbies are on the menu, I just can't order anything else. As long as they are done simply (sauted in butter or just boiled) and without a lot of herbs or spices or strong flavours, they will be wonderful.

They grow to about 16 – 18cm long, they range in colour from brown to green to red to black to blue – they can change colour to suit the conditions in order to camoflage themselves from preditors.

We eat a lot of seafood here in Australia, fresh fish and prawns are the top sellers in our fish markets. Freshwater critters are not as popular except for the Barrumundi (a huge fish that lives in the Northern parts of Australia). I hope the Yabby stays relatively unknown – all the more for me.