While it might at first seem intimidating, hosting your own seafood boil is honestly way easier than it seems! We'll teach you all the tips and tricks on putting together a seafood party whether you want to serve just your family for dinner or serve a large gathering of people.
"Turned out fantastic!! Used extra shrimp and crawfish vs. the clams & lobsters." ~Taylor on Pinterest
Literally the best seafood boil!
We're here to share our easy seafood boil recipe even a first-timer can put together!! You can use a wide variety of seafood like we do, or you can just as easily use 1-2 types of seafood like shrimp and crab legs.
This is a super easy recipe to put together and it's simple to swap out the seafood for your personal preferences! Feel free to double your favorite kind of seafood and skip something else.
Figuring out the amount to make per person
As a general rule of thumb, we allow a few potatoes per person, 1-2 corn sections, 4 oz sausage each, and about ½-1 lb of seafood per person, depending on the type of seafood you're using.
Our recipe as written will serve a group of 8 people. It's easy to scale up or down depending on how many people you're serving.
The biggest factor is that you'll be restricted based on how large of a pot you have for cooking. Using a large outdoor pot is best for serving a crowd, a batch indoors can be split between two stock pots.
Serve our easy boil recipe with a side of seafood boil sauce, co*cktail sauce, or garlic butter sauce. Having tons of napkins on hand is a must!
Pot seasoning
It's easy to change up the type of seafood getting used or the quantity you're serving, but seasoning your water is very critical. Here's the ratio regardless if you're making our exact recipe or plan to scale it up or down.
- ¼ cup Old Bay per 2 quarts of water
- 1 teaspoon salt per 2 quarts of water
What you'll need
** There's a printable recipe card at the very bottom of the post **
- 1 ½ lb potatoes (Yukon gold or red), cut into half
- 4 ears of sweet corn, husked and each broken into thirds - fresh corn or frozen will work here
- 1 ½ lb kielbasa or andouille sausage, sliced into 2" pieces (we used both)
- 2 onions, quartered - yellow, white, sweet, or red
- 2 lemons, quartered
- 10 garlic cloves
- 2 crabs like Dungeness crab legs or king crab legs (1 crab weighs about 1 ½-2 lb, yields 8 oz crab meat after cracking). Recommend 4 people per crab when served with other types of seafood too. If you're just serving crab then allow ½ crab per person or a whole crab per hearty eater.
- 2 lb large shrimp, peeled and deveined - buying frozen shrimp that comes peeled and deveined saves you time
- 2 lb clams - little necks are most commonly found at the grocery store in the meat department. Manila clams and butter clams are a little larger and meatier than little hecks but are regional and seasonal.
- 4 lobster tails - typically range in size from 4 oz-6 oz. We suggest 1 tail for 2 people to cut and share.
- Old Bay seasoning
- Bay leaves
- sea salt or kosher salt
NOTE: Some readers have doubled the shrimp and skipped the clams! Or replace the clams with crawfish, depending on where you live.
Sauce to serve with your cooked seafood
SEAFOOD SAUCE
1 cup seafood broth - or seafood stock or chicken stock
1 tablespoon Old Bay
1 stick butter, melted
1 teaspoon dried garlic powder
2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Equipment
- Very large pot for boiling the seafood. A 10-12 quart stock pot, an outdoor pot and burner, or a turkey frying pot all work well.
What crab is best for a boil?
Blue Crabs - East Coast
Dungeness - West Coast
These two are the most popular crabs people use in a boil, both are known for their sweet and succulent meat.
Snow crab legs and King crab legs can also be used, they’re often sold frozen and precooked and take less time to cook than raw crabs. Smaller Rock crabs on the West Coast are less common to find in grocery stores than Dungeness, but they can still be used if you have them.
Substitutions and variations
Instead of making the recipe with crab, lobster, clams, and shrimp, you can also add as many of those as you like or even just one! Popular fresh seafood boils include:
- crawfish boil
- crab boil
- shrimp boil
- lobster boil
Add Cajun seasoning for a low country style bowl. Some recipes add the classic Old Bay seasoning like ours did, others add a bit of Cajun seasoning.
Can you use frozen seafood?
Yes, you can use frozen seafood and simply cook them frozen. You'll just need to add a couple of extra minutes to the cooking time for that particular item if it's lobster or crab, frozen shrimp still cooks in 2-3 minutes.
How to boil seafood outdoors
Make sure you have all of your ingredients prepped and ready to go. This recipe goes very fast once the water is boiling and to avoid overcooking anything, you need to cook them in an exact timed sequence. Don't worry, it's super easy!
Prep ingredients
Fill a large pot with 6 quarts of water (20 cups). You'll need at least a 10-12 qt pot or a large outdoor pot to hold everything, or you'll need to split the ingredients between 2 pots. (We only had a 24-quart pot, we could've served an army!)
This is a great time to cut the corn, potatoes, sausage, onions, and the lemons, plus to prep any seafood.
Step 1: Add the lemon wedges, onion wedges, crushed garlic cloves, Old Bay, and salt to the pot. Bring the water to a boil.
Step 2: Add the potato halves to the pot and cook them for 8 minutes.
Step 3: Add the lobster tails, live clams, fresh corn, and crab legs or sections and cook for 5 minutes.
Step 4: Add the precooked andouille sausage chunks and shrimp and cook for 2 minutes until they just turn pink. The clam shells should be open at this point, discard any shells that did not open.
Step 5: Drain the water from the pot (reserving 1 cup for the seafood sauce, and dump the cooked seafood over newspaper on the table or on baking sheets. Let the seafood rest for 5 minutes.
Step 6: While the seafood is cooling a tad make our quick seafood sauce. Combine the 1 cup of seafood water, 2 sticks of melted butter, garlic powder, and lemon juice.
Serve
- Drizzle the sauce over the seafood, potatoes, and corn, and sprinkle everything with a little Old Bay and chopped parsley. Ready to serve a crowd!
- Serve the boil with garlic butter seafood sauce, co*cktail sauce, tartar sauce, lemon wedges, Cajun garlic butter, or salted melted butter for dipping.
Cooking times
Hosting a boil does involve a little math, but don't be intimidated! We're making it as easy as possible by giving you the cooking time for each fresh seafood ingredient.
For example, if the crab legs take 7 minutes to cook and you're also adding fresh shrimp that only takes 2 minutes to cook, you'll add the shrimp 5 minutes after the crab legs start cooking.
- Crab sections - 7 minutes for cooked (from the grocery store), 17 minutes for whole raw crabs (as in you just caught them out in the water).
- Crab legs - 3 minutes
- Lobster tails - 4-7 minutes
- Crawfish - 3 minutes
- Clams - 5-7 minutes
- Mussels - 5 minutes
- Oysters - 5 minutes
- Shrimp or prawns - 2 minutes
We do include our exact order and cooking times in the recipe card at the very bottom of the post.
Serving suggestions
You don't need to add a lot of side dishes since you already have the main protein and hot veggies covered.
Some nice add-ons include garlic bread, a green salad like our Avocado Kale Salad, watermelon slices or a fruit salad, creamy baked macaroni and cheese, and of course a simple dessert such as ice cream, pie, cookies, or cupcakes.
Don't forget garlic butter sauce, our fantastic Seafood Boil Sauce or co*cktail Sauce on the side!
Storing leftovers
Storage: Store leftovers in the fridge in an air-tight container for up to 3-4 days. Shellfish such as clams can only last 2 days in the fridge, and cooked lobster only lasts 3 days so it’s advised to store these ingredients separately or plan on eating all of the leftovers within 2 days.
Freeze: Leftover cooked seafood can be frozen for up to 3 months when stored in an airtight container or Ziplock freezer bag.
How to reheat seafood boil
The best way to reheat boiled seafood, corn, sausage, and potatoes is to steam them on the stovetop.
In a large pot add 2 cups of water to the pot and a steamer basket. Bring the water to a simmer, add the leftovers, and steam for 3-5 minutes until everything is heated through. We don't recommend boiling the leftover seafood unless you saved some of the seafood pot liquid.
More seafood recipes
Love seafood recipes? We have tons more!
- Dungeness crab cakes
- Air fryer lobster tail
- Thai curried cod
- Blackened cod
- Air fryer Cajun shrimp
If you loved our recipe, please leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review and leave us a comment too! Connect with us on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube!
We'd love to hear about your results! Please post in the comments below and tell us about your seafood party.
The Best Seafood Boil Recipe
Yield: 8 servings
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes
Learn how to prepare the best seafood boil as a special meal with a variety of seafood, sausage, corn, potatoes, and seasoning. We'll teach you all the tips and tricks whether you want to serve just your family for dinner or serve a large gathering of people.
Ingredients
- 1 ½ lb potatoes (Yukon gold or red), cut into half
- 4 ears of corn, each broken into thirds
- 1 ½ lb kielbasa or andouille sausage, sliced into 2" pieces
- 2 onions, quartered
- 2 lemons, quartered
- 10 garlic cloves, separated, peeled and smashed with the back of a knife
- 2 crabs (each crab weighs about 1 ½-2 lb each, cracked yields 8 oz crab meat)
- 2 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
- 2 lb clams
- 4 lobster tails
- ½ cup Old Bay seasoning
- 3 Bay leaves
- 1 tablespoon salt
- SEAFOOD SAUCE
- 1 cup seafood broth - or seafood stock or chicken stock
- 1 tablespoon Old Bay
- 1 sticks butter, melted
- 1 teaspoon dried garlic powder
- 2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Instructions
- Fill a large pot with 6 quarts of water (20 cups). You'll need a 10-12 qt pot or a large outdoor pot to hold everything, or you'll need to split the ingredients between 2 pots.
- Add the lemon wedges, onion wedges, crushed garlic cloves, Old Bay, and salt to the pot. Bring the water to a boil.
- Add the potato halves to the pot and cook them for 8 minutes.
- Add the lobsters, clams, corn, and crab for 5 minutes.
- Add the precooked sausage chunks shrimp and cook for 2 minutes until they just turn pink. The clam shells should be open at this point, discard any shells that did not open.
- Drain the water from the pot (reserving 2 cups for the seafood sauce), and spread the seafood boil over newspaper on the table or on baking sheets. Let the seafood rest for 5 minutes to cool a bit.
- While the seafood is cooling a tad make our quick seafood sauce. Combine the 1 cup of seafood water, 2 sticks of melted butter, Old Bay, garlic powder, and lemon juice.
- Drizzle the sauce over the seafood, potatoes, and corn, and sprinkle everything with a little Old Bay and chopped parsley. Ready to serve a crowd!
- Serve the boil with co*cktail sauce, tartar sauce, lemon wedges, or more melted butter for dipping.
Notes
The recipe can easily be cut back or increased depending on how many people you're serving. The ratio of seasoning is ½ cup per 2 quarts of water of Old Bay and 1 tablespoon of salt per 2 quarts of water.
Any type of seafood will work, or you can do a seafood boil with just one variety such as a crab boil, lobster boil, shrimp boil, or crawfish boil.
If you're cooking raw whole crabs, increase their total cooking time to 17 minutes.
Did you make this recipe?
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