Bringing a little Cajun to the Coleman household: Crawfish Etoufee

While searching through my cook books last Sunday looking for something different to try, I cam across a recipe for Shrimp Creole, which reminded me of a little packet of recipe cards that I had purchased on my last trip to New Orleans (my favorite city ever). Upon digging out my little packet of recipes, I read over the recipe for Crawfish Etoufee. This is a recipe that I'd never tried before, and thought it would be a great day to give it a shot, but first I had to find crawfish tails. This turned out to be no easy feat, but 4 phone calls later, I found frozen crawfish tails in a one pound bag, already de-shelled. Surprisingly, the HyVee on Cass was the only one that had such a thing in stock, however every other store offered to special order some for me. Now that I was armed with the proper ingredients, it was time to get cooking! 

Crawfish Etoufee:

Recipe from "Louisiana Cajun Cooking; 12 Authentic Recipes"

• 1 lb. peeled crawfish tails
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1/4 lb. butter
• 2 tbsp. cornstarch
• 1 medium onion
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 1/2 green pepper
• 2 cups water
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste

1). Melt butter in dutch oven (do not use iron pot). Add paprika. Add crawfish tails and saute approximately 5 minutes, then remove and set aside.

(the tails after their hot butter bath)

2). To pot add onion, bell pepper and garlic and saute well (approximately 10 minutes). Return tails to pot. Add 2 cups water and Worcestershire sauce. Stir and simmer slowly for 40 minutes. Check taste... add salt and pepper as desired. 

3). Mix cornstarch with a little of the liquid from the pot and add to pot. Stir until slightly thickened. Serve over rice and enjoy! Serves 4.

(after cooking down for 40 minutes and thickening)

Mmmmm. How I love me some Cajun Cookin'! Since Eric and I like things a little on the spicier side, I did add a hefty amount of Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce to my pot before it cooked down. Other than that, I pretty much followed the recipe exactly.

This dish really turned out well. The crawfish were nice and tender and the sauce was really flavorful after cooking down for that long. Eric and I both really enjoyed it. However, he would kill me if he knew I fed him something with a full stick of butter in it while he's trying to loose weight. Oh well. It still tasted good!