Of course, I’m going to follow up my last article containing a crawfish boil with more crawfish recipes. This shellfish is the star of springtime cooking in South Louisiana. From Crawfish Bread to Crawfish Étouffée, its preparations are only limited to your imagination.
So, what has my imagination dreamed up today? I have 3 different preparations using Louisiana’s favorite crustacean: Cream of Crawfish Sauce, Crawfish Tasso Pasta and Crawfish Potato Salad. These recipes shows just how versatile crawfish are. Grab those mudbugs and Let’s head to the kitchen!
This is one of my favorite sauces. It taste great over grilled or fried fish. It’s is equally good over mashed potatoes. You can add more crawfish to the recipe and serve it over pasta.The possibilities are endless.
Cream of Crawfish Sauce
½ cup crawfish tails, slightly chopped
2 Tablespoons Creole seasoning
2/3 cup minced onions
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter, cut in to pieces
Coat crawfish with creole seasoning. Combine crawfish, onions and Worcestershire sauce in a sauté pan. Sauté for 2 minutes. Add heavy cream and reduce for 10 minutes. Add butter and stir until butter is melted and incorporated.
Here’s a variation on Copeland’s Shrimp Tasso Pasta. Crawfish and shrimp are interchangeable in most recipes. I always use crawfish whenever I can.
Crawfish Tasso Pasta
10 tablespoons butter, divided
1 tablespoon garlic, minced
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1 1/2 pounds crawfish tails
1/4 pound tasso, diced
8 ounces bow tie pasta cooked al denté
In a large saucepan over medium heat, sauté garlic in 8 tablespoons of butter for 3 minutes or until golden brown. Add the heavy cream. Heat until the edges start to bubble. Slowly add the Parmesan cheese and mix until well blended.
In a medium sauté pan, sauté the crawfish and tasso in the remaining butter for 2-3 minutes or until the crawfish and tasso are warm. Add crawfish and tasso to sauce. Warm together for 3 minutes. Serve over bow tie pasta.
Here’s a different way to use crawfish. It’s a great way to incorporate the mudbug into a backyard BBQ or picnic. You may want to double the recipe; it disappears quick.
Crawfish Potato Salad
1 1/2 pounds small red new potatoes, unpeeled
Water
1 pound crawfish tails, chilled
2 celery stalks, chopped fine
Dressing
3 medium cloves garlic, peeled
1 1/2 cups mayonnaise
1/4 cup Creole mustard
1/4 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
4 green onions, coarsely chopped, including green tops
1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley, minced
2 fresh bay leaves, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons Louisiana hot sauce
Wash the potatoes well. Cut them into 1/2-inch dice. Place the diced potatoes in a 4-quart saucepan and add cold water to cover. Bring to a boil and cook until tender, about 20 minutes (do not overcook). Drain well. In a large bowl, combine the boiled potatoes, crawfish tails, and chopped celery; set aside.
Prepare dressing. In a food processor fitted with steel blade and with machine running, drop the garlic cloves through the feed tube to mince them. Stop machine and scrape down sides of bowl. Add all remaining ingredients and process until smooth and well blended, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice. Fold the dressing into the crawfish and potato mixture, blending well. Chill well before serving.
Are crawfish my favorite seafood? That’s hard to say since I like most seafood. It is definitely one of my favorites to cook with. There’s just so much you can do with them. Remember, you can get good quality crawfish tails off season in the freezer section at the grocery store. Just make sure they are from Louisiana. Don’t just look at the name, read the label. Make sure they are not farm raised from overseas. The quality is just not the same.
