Wild crayfish are a tasty delicacy that is right up there with wild venison, wild boar, wild salmon and wild prawns as a sustainable alternative to farmed meat, fish and shellfish.
By Anna Fidler, Product Development Lead at The Kennet Crayfish Company
Wild is considered superior to farmed in many food delicacies. Think of wild game such as venison, boar, partridge and hare, along with wild salmon, trout, and prawns amongst others. Wild equates to more flavour, better texture and more satisfaction from knowing what you are eating had a happier life. A new returner to this canon is the crayfish. Caught in a British chalk stream and humanely processed, wild crayfish are exotic, sustainable, eco-friendly candidates for starter or main course menus.
Chilled, not frozen, wild crayfish can be used in the same way as large prawns or langoustines. With such sweet meat, simplicity is key: eat cooked fresh crayfish naked with mayonnaise and a dash of lemon juice, or gently toss them through pasta with some sautéed garlic, fresh tomatoes, chilli, parsley and olive oil. In addition to Italian restaurants for pasta dishes, they are also popular in Chinese, Mexican, gastropub and US southern states style dishes, and a three Michelin Star restaurant uses them for foam. All find inventive and delicious ways to serve our Wild Kennet Crayfish.
Crayfish are a delicious, smaller, fresh water cousin of the lobster and they are bad news for other river dwellers and the river environment. Signal crayfish, the ones we eat, are an invasive species. They come from North America and carry a virus to which native crayfish have no defence plus they predate the eggs and young of fish and invertebrates, so eating them is good for the environment. In colder months they become less active, living in torpor close to hibernation; for this period they hide under rocks and tunnel into riverbanks, up to a metre, often undermining the bank so that it collapses and silts up the river. So they have seasonal availability – between June and the end of the year. Keeping the numbers down, much like we do with wild deer, boar and rabbits, reduces the amount of damage they do, in this case to wildlife, fauna, flora and the river environment.
Our business, The Kennet Crayfish Company, can only realistically keep the numbers for wild crayfish down in one river, The Kennet. However this is an important chalk stream. One of only 200 in the world, that provides a unique habitat of nutrient rich water for a wide range of fish, fauna and riverbank dwellers, including otters and kingfishers.
How we process crayfish is strictly proscribed and licensed. We take great care to process them in humane ways, including covered tanks, because they are largely nocturnal and prefer to live in the dark sheltered under rocks, and keeping them throughout in water from the river Kennet, for which we have special licences.
Crayfish are a versatile delicacy with growing popularity. I have put recipes on our website for Pad Thai with crayfish, my take on some prawn-based classics such as crayfish cocktail and potted crayfish, along with some simple dipping sauces for crayfish. To make use of the shells, there’s a lovely recipe for crayfish bisque and our new YouTube channel shows how to make a Cajun-inspired Louisiana Boil. I will add more recipes pairing crayfish with Italian style pasta, Chinese rice dishes and other ideas as we develop them.
Notes:
Anna Fidler is an International cook, food-writer and restaurateur She has catered for hundreds of guests at weddings and events from the Home Counties to Italy and Jamaica, worked as a cookery demonstrator for brands such as Aga, Everhot and Wolf, set up restaurants and a deli, written cookbooks and provided food on location for music videos and photo shoots. Anna linked up with The Kennet Crayfish Company in 2024 to develop recipes for wild crayfish from the River Kennet.
Kennet Crayfish Company Limited
The Kennet Crayfish Company Limited was formed in 2022, replacing a previous co-operative selling live crayfish, in response to new legislation that prohibited the sale of live crayfish and placed stringent controls on their handling. With funding secured from Businesses for JHB Limited, the company established the largest state-of-the art crayfish processing plant in Britain at Thatcham. With the necessary licences to process crayfish and to abstract water from the River Kennet, the company sells wild-trapped crayfish, sold chilled, both par-cooked and fully cooked. Kennet Crayfish Company was nominated as one of three finalists in the main category “Food Producer of the Year” at the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2024. In January 2025, the company added Kennet Crayfish Gin to its portfolio which won a silver medal at World Gin Awards. In June 2025 they were awarded a bronze medal in the Contemporary Gin category of the prestigious International Wine & Spirit Competition (IWSC).