One-Pot Wonders

Easy crawfish étouffée

by:
September 18, 2015
4.7
9 Ratings
Easy crawfish étouffée
Photo by garlic and zest
  • Serves 2
Author Notes

This ode to New Orleans is ready in under an hour! —garlic and zest

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • 2 slices bacon, diced
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1/2 white onion, diced
  • 1 stalk celery, diced
  • 1/2 bell pepper diced (I used red)
  • 1 jalapeño, seeded and diced
  • 1 large clove garlic, minced
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground bay leaves (optional)
  • 8 ounces clam juice or chicken stock
  • 1/4 cup water, divided
  • 2 worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • 1 cup chopped tomato
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • dash of cayenne pepper (to taste)
  • 1/2 pound peeled crawfish tails (you can substitute shrimp if you can't find crawfish)
  • 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
  • 2 green onions, diced
  • several dashes hot sauce (such as Crystal)
  • cooked white or brown rice
Directions
  1. Heat a medium-sized, heavy skillet over medium high heat. Add the bacon and cook until crisp. Transfer bacon to paper towels to drain. Add the butter to the bacon grease in the pan and stir in the onion, celery, bell pepper and jalapeño. Saute until vegetables are softened and slightly translucent. Stir in the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.
  2. Sprinkle the flour and ground bay leaves over the vegetables and stir until vegetables are coated with the flour, cooking for about 1 minute. Stir in the clam juice or chicken stock (whichever you're using) and water and bring to a low boil, cooking for one minute until sauce has thickened.
  3. Stir in the worcestershire sauce, tomato paste and chopped tomato and simmer for about 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt, pepper and cayenne pepper Stir in the crawfish or shrimp and simmer an additional 5-6 minutes until the seafood is just cooked.
  4. Spoon rice onto a plate and top with a generous portion of étouffée. Sprinkle with parsley, chopped green onions and a dash of Crystal Hot Sauce or other favorite hot sauce - and don't forget that crispy bacon -- definitely sprinkle some of that on top! Recipe can easily be doubled.
Tags:

See what other Food52ers are saying.

  •
  • Dinah H McClymonds
    Dinah H McClymonds
  • J Hu
    J Hu

Popular on Food52

2 Reviews

Dinah H.
Dinah H. April 16, 2022
While this recipe says "easy," I would say that term can be used ONLY because most of the ingredients are readily available. There is a LOT of chopping and slicing preliminary to cooking. And IF you have the good fortune to have crawfish on hand, which I did, it took my husband and I an hour to clean two pounds, resulting in less than a cup of meat. NO problem...I just added some shrimp to fill out the recipe. But, this is a task-heavy meal, and one that you need to prepare for well in advance. That said...it is delicious. And filling, and rich. All the good things you want from a complicated process. We took photos and shared them with the friends who gave us the two pounds of cooked crawfish! I served it with a simple salad of leaf lettuce with avocado and fresh grapefruit to cut through the richness of the etouffee. All in all, a memorable meal, just don't assume that you can make it in under an hour.
 
J H.
J H. May 9, 2017
Sooooo good. Took me back to New Orleans. This and gumbo are my favorites. (Crawfish Monica is up there too.) I had to make this for 7 people. So I just tripled the recipe. I also had about 2 lbs of peeled crawfish from a crawfish boil. So I used precooked crawfish that was already cooked with Zatarain's. Here are the adjustments that I did. 4 large slices of bacon which yielded enough fat and crispy bacon on top of the dish. I skipped the butter and used a bit of canola oil. Used 3/4 of a large yellow onion. One large red bell pepper. 3 serrano peppers instead of jalapenos. I did use bay leaves. I added cooked crawfish for only 3 min- enough for it to reheat and simmer with the sauce. I didn't add any hot sauce. The dish had a good heat to it- especially with the cayenne. This dish was a hit and we ate it all. Bacon bits on top made it a bit tastier.