Crawfish Étouffée

Today’s Fun Cajun Friday post is on Crawfish Étouffée.  We ate it for dinner last night and it was wonderful. I was a little shocked since I haven’t made this dish before.  I got a request on my Facebook page from an old high school friend so I decided to put it on the menu and I’m so glad I did.  It was so, so, so much simpler than I ever thought it would be and I ended up liking mine more than any I’ve ever had at any restaurant! Score!! If you have something you’d like to see, head straight over to my Facebook or Twitter page or comment at the end of this post (you know your comments make my day ) and ask away!  I’ll be happy to add anything you guys want to see.  After all, you’re why I am here!!

You may notice in the picture above that the rice looks a little odd?  I used brown rice.  You see, we eat a very large range of foods.  Some super healthy, some super NOT, so I do my best to sneak in things that are good for us any chance I get, hence the brown rice.  In this dish the flavor in the Crawfish Étouffée is so good you don’t taste the rice.  It’s really there for texture.  Have you ever heard a comedian (or someone who thought they were comedians) make a joke about someone ordering a super sized meal with a diet coke?  The brown rice is my diet coke.  I don’t see anything wrong with that.  Why not save the fat and or calories wherever you can?  Especially if it’s something you won’t notice, right?  I personally don’t drink diet coke.  I think it’s gross but that’s just my example.

Crawfish Étouffée really isn’t that unhealthy and when you add the brown rice it gets a little boost in that department.  The only thing really bad would be the stick of butter but that’s also for the entire dish so really, not all that bad!  Plus there’s lots of vegetables, too!  Bell Peppers are a super food…did you know that?  They are chock full of antioxidants.  And did I mention, I think I did, that it’s super simple?  It probably only took me about 20 minutes or so and it was on the table.  I doubled my recipe because I have heavy eaters in this family, especially with the Cajun foods, but I’m listing the normal quantities.  If you need to feed more than 4 or so then go ahead and double.

The hardest part is chopping your vegetables but I used my trusty food processor and just pulsed a few times.  You want to make sure you leave them fairly large.  They will cook down a bit and get soft so don’t get too aggressive with that machine.  If you don’t have one, there is a mini chopper at your local Wal-Mart for around $10 that works just fine.  You do have to chop in batches because it’s small but the cleanup is super simple!

I’ve talked about this before.  There are three ingredients used in Cajun cooking and you’ll find it in nearly every recipe.  It’s called the holy trinity in Cajun cooking.  Bell pepper, celery and onion.  You’ll find it in my Cajun Shrimp Salad, Red Beans and Rice, Chicken and Smoked Sausage Jambalaya among other things.

The list of ingredients may seem long but really, trust me, if you want to try and make a Cajun dish this one would be a perfect one to start.

Crawfish Étouffée is traditionally not super spicy.  I (and everyone I birthed) loves spice so I always add more but make it the way you like.  The amount of red pepper in the recipe does not make it spicy at all.

If you’ve never made anything with crawfish before don’t be alarmed at the site of the frozen crawfish.  It seems a little odd but turns out awesome.  Plus, if you tried to use fresh crawfish you’d be restricted to only crawfish season (which is January to June but more like March to May because at the beginning and end they aren’t great…small in the beginning and not worth it or large and hard at the end and again not worth it) and you’d have to sit and peel all those little buggers and unless your eating them then, that is NO FUN! Trust me!  Grab the frozen ones!

Have you ever tried an Étouffée?  They can be made with chicken, shrimp, etc!  What’s your favorite?  What Cajun foods would YOU like to see?  Let me know in the comments and I’ll work on it for sure.  Thanks for stopping by.

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