Crawfish Etouffee Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is étouffée sauce made of? ›

What's in an Étouffée Sauce? Étouffée is a type of stew if you want to get technical. It's made with a roux, onion, celery, and bell pepper (the holy trinity), tomato, garlic, hot sauce, and either shrimp, crawfish, or chicken.

Crawfish étouffée is a simple dish of sweet and meaty crawfish served up in a rich and flavorful gravy that is made from a quick roux. The dish includes the Cajun holy trinity of onions, bell peppers and celery, along with lots of garlic, spicy Cajun seasonings, and fresh chopped herbs.

Etouffee can be found in both Creole and Cajun cuisine, with slight but important differences in the seasoning and preparation of each version. Creole etouffee uses a traditional French-style roux made from butter and flour while the roux for Cajun etouffee is made with oil, lard, or other animal fats.

To make this killer sauce, what we need is a roux—a paste of flour cooked in fat—along with a truly flavorful stock, plenty of aromatic vegetables, plus herbs and spices. By the time the shrimp enter the pot, all the work is already done.

To make my etoufee spicy, I use Louisiana sauce. Louisiana sauce is the best because it has the perfect balance of spicy to acidity, and limited ingredients. I prefer canned tomatoes to fresh because they yield a more velvety result.

Crawfish is a lean protein and crawfish tails are a great way to get a meal on the table. Usually an etouffee includes lots of butter and/or oil and is not healthy. What's great about my recipe is this easy crawfish recipe tastes just as good and it is a diabetic crawfish etouffee.

My trick for the crawfish tail meat is to add fresh squeezed lemon juice to them before adding into the light roux base with vegetables. That way, if you are introducing yourself to the crawfish world, you won't be put off by the fishy smell. It doesn't take long to make, especially since the roux is light.

Flour: All-purpose flour thickens the étouffée. Tomato sauce: Canned tomato sauce lends even more depth of flavor.

Crawfish is packed either with fat-on or it may be rinsed/washed to remove the fat. The yellow substance is the fat. Most cooks prefer crawfish with fat-on since it enhances the flavor of the finished dish. You may remove the fat simply by rinsing the crawfish in cold water.

How to season crawfish? ›

These are the ingredients you'll need for this top-rated crawfish boil recipe: Spices and seasonings: This flavorful crawfish boil is seasoned with garlic, bay leaves, dry crab boil, liquid shrimp and crab boil seasoning, and salt and pepper.

Both are considered main dishes, but étouffée is more or less a sauce or thick gravy, typically served over rice. Jambalaya, however, is a rice dish, akin to paella, its likely ancestor. One uses rice as a vehicle, the other as a staple component of the dish.

The "holy trinity" in Cajun cuisine and Louisiana Creole cuisine is the base for several dishes in the regional cuisines of Louisiana and consists of onions, bell peppers and celery. The preparation of Cajun/Creole dishes such as crawfish étouffée, gumbo, and jambalaya all start from this base.

You want the étouffée to be thick, but not ridiculously thick—-think of it like a thick pasta sauce. Now add your spices! Tony Chachere's Cajun seasoning, cayenne pepper, Worcestershire sauce and Louisiana hot sauce. Bring to a boil and stir.

Both etouffee and gumbo are broth-based, using shrimp stock, seafood stock, crawfish tail stock, or chicken stock. But etouffee has a thicker, gravy-like consistency whereas gumbo is a thinner stew.

Crawfish Etouffee is a classic Louisiana dish with a buttery, rich, and intensely flavorful sauce and heaps of fresh crawfish tails, herbs, and spices. This fabulous dish's secret is a good roux and the holy trinity with extra garlic thrown in.

Flavor. Gumbo and etouffee both start with the vegetable trinity of Cajun seasonings (bay leaf, paprika, and cayenne), but etouffee tends to be lighter and almost sweet in flavor, while gumbo is deep and savory.

The word étouffée (pronounced eh-too-fey) comes from the French word“to smother.” The best way to describe this dish is a very thick stew, seasoned to perfection and chock full of delicious, plump crawfish (or shrimp) served over rice.

In a nutshell, gumbo, akin to a stew, relies on a dark roux for its thick, nutty nature; étouffée, on the other hand, features seafood in a silky, flavorful sauce, and; jambalaya, reminiscent of Spanish paella, is a one-pot wonder.