Waves crashed as a supply vessel approached the Maersk Valiant deepwater drillship stationed near an oil rig 400 miles off the coast of Louisiana one May night around a decade ago. Chris Reed and several of his crewmates hauled the shipping crates containing 2,500 pounds of crawfish on ice, along with a large number of pots and cookers, onto the ship. After they set up the equipment on the deck, Reed seasoned and prepared the mudbugs for all 300 crewmembers on the ship.
A longtime Mathiston, Miss., resident, Reed traveled to Lafayette, La., to apply as an environmental specialist for a company called MI Flaco in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that devastated the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Reed’s position saw him stationed on a number of different oil rigs off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, working to remove massive amounts of crude oil from the Gulf. He and other workers regularly spent as long as two weeks at a time stationed offshore working around the clock to clean up after the spill followed by a week of downtime on shore before returning to the rigs once more.
Working side-by-side for extended periods, Reed and other rig workers took to talking while they worked, and food became a regular subject. Reed, who had already enjoyed cooking even before working the rigs, found himself learning a great deal about Cajun cooking from his fellow workers, and he picked up a number of recipe ideas from them that he would often practice putting his own spin on during his downtime—leading him ultimately to volunteer to feed his crew that spring day.
“I’ve been cooking all my life and have found that you can honestly pick up recipes from any number of people in any number of places, whether you’re working with them or just camping out on the weekend,” Reed says. “The trick has been to twist my recipes to better suit the tastes of people in Mississippi, as they do things very differently out in Louisiana. I use a lot of cumin in my crawfish spice,
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