Crawfish Étouffée Recipe

From HeatWiki

Crawfish Étouffée is perhaps the most commonly prepared Étouffée in Louisiana cooking. It is certainly the most common Étouffée served in Cajun restaurants.

Ingredients

This recipe is intended to be scalable. One pound of crawfish should serve about four people. For each additional pound of crawfish increase the remaining ingredients accordingly. This version is made with roux.

• 1 pound - Crawfish tails (fresh or frozen)
• 1 stick - butter
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups - chopped yellow onions
• 1/2 of a bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 celery rib, thinly sliced.
• 6-8 cloves of pressed or crushed fresh garlic
• 1/2 of a medium-sized habanero pepper cut into small pieces (optional)
• salt
• black pepper

Preparation

The first step is to make a roux by melting the butter in a cast iron or other suitable skillet. Over medium heat, add the flour to the butter, stirring it in gradually and reduce the heat to medium low. With a metal spatula, constantly stir and scrape the flour off the bottom of the skillet taking care to prevent the flour that sticks to the bottom of the skillet from burning. Brown the roux in this fashion until it is the approximate color of milk-chocolate.

Once the roux has reached the proper color add the garlic to the roux. Stir the garlic into the roux for about 30 seconds to one minute then add the bell pepper, onions, celery and habanero pepper. Allow this to cook down into the consistency of a thick gravy and then transfer to a larger covered pot. Once the vegetables are very tender, add the crawfish tails and cook for an additional 10-15 minutes adding salt and black pepper to taste.

Serve over long-grain rice.

Notes

• Fresh serrano, jalapeño, cayenne or other hot peppers can be substituted. Dried cayenne powder is commonly used instead of fresh peppers. Fresh peppers are preferable and it is best to remove the seeds from all peppers first.
• You may also add chopped green onions at the same time other vegetables are added.
• The thickness of the etouffee can be adjusted by adding water (but don't add too much) or by adding additional onions.
• Frozen crawfish are widely available. Louisiana crawfish frozen with fat is preferable.
• Shrimp can be substituted for Crawfish (but then it's a Shrimp Étouffée).