Written by adam on Aug 13, 2006
Crawfish Etouffe
We're coming up on a year since the Hurrican Katrina disaster, so I thought I would start featuring some recipes from the bayou. New Orleans actually just south of proper Cajun country, but the cuisine has spread all over the state and into my great state of Texas. One of my favorite cajun dishes is Crawfish Etouffe (EH-too-FAY). There's a Texas/Cajun restaurant near where I live that serves a terrific crawfish etouffee, so good that it's my "usual."
Crawfish are small crustaceans that live in fresh water. Well, fresh isn't usually the most correct term. These tiny cousins of the lobster are often termed "mudbugs" as they usually live in dirty, muddy water. They are shellfish, but they have a very unique scent and flavor to them. It's unlike anything else. And I love that smell. It's hard to fine fresh crawfish tails in my part of Texas, but you can usually get them frozen in a vacuum-sealed pack.
Ingredients
- 1 stick butter
- 0.5-1 lb. crawfish tails
- 1-2 TBSP crawfish fat (see note)
- 1 medium white onion, chopped
- 3/4 cup bell pepper, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 3/4 cup celery, chopped
- 1 TBSP Lemon Juice
- the green ends of 4 green onions, chopped
- 1 TBSP chopped parsely
- 1 TBSP Tabasco pepper sauce
- Pinch of salt
In a large skillet, heat the butter over medium heat until it starts to sizzle. Add the onion, pepper, garlic, and celery and cook for 5 minutes or until slightly soft. Add the crawfish fat, salt, and Tabasco, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occaisionally.
Add the crawfish tails, lemon juice, and parsely. Cook another 5 minutes to heat the tails through. Serve hot over rice and sprinkle the green onions on top.
Note: If you are using frozen crawfish tails, you can obtain the fat by draining the tails and reserving the liquid. That liquid that runs off is the fat. If you don't have any crawfish fat, you could use some bacon drippings or just add some extra butter.
Responses to "Crawfish Etouffe" ...
guys, if i didn't like you as much as i do, this picture would really make me hate you! My god i'm so sad to have missed crawfish season this year (and etoufee all year. Great picture and post adam, you really have my mouth watering :-)
Am making this tonight. FYI, one pound of frozen crawfish tails runs $11.99 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was hoping they'd started pulling crawfish out of Lake Erie, but no such luck...
Do the mudbugs even live up there? Thought the water would be too cold. If a 1 pound pack of tails is 11.99, I'd say that's not too shabby. Outside of Lousiana and the edge of the Gulf Coast, it's hard to get them cheap.
Donna
This picture looks so delicious. I'm ready for some!
This was fantastic last night, and will be again today for lunch. I panicked a bit and cooked some flour into the veggies and then added some water with the Tabasco & crawfish fat - things looked really greasy prior to adding flour. I probably had the veg & butter on too much heat. Regardless, it was fantastic. I tripled the amount of Tabasco, and the heat was just right.
Since winter of 2004, I have been exploring the world of cooking and helping out my fellow men in their quests to better themselves in the kitchen. My name is Adam Byrd, you can learn more about me and my mission on my