Crawfish etouffee recipe

[timmytime4]

Does anyone have a simple Etoufee recipe?

[timmytime4]

Thank you so much..... I am heading to the market now.

[Monch]

No worries!

Please report on which one you use and the outcome!

[Val]

I'm dying just reading those recipes...have been to New Orleans many times...question is: these days, it seems hard to find actual Louisiana crawfish except if you live there (so many packages say China or Taiwan, no way will I buy them)...when is the season and when do you think is the best time of year to be able to find them, even if frozen? Thanks!

[Monch]

Yeah,

I'm up in Wisconsin and "Fabian Seafood", from Galveston, runs trucks up, a few times a year, to a spot a block from my office.

They bring in vacuum sealed, never frozen, tail meat. It's fantastic.

I have only bought live crawfish from these folks, but their site has frozen:

http://www.crawfishcoofcentralflainc....

[lexpatti]

Val, you can have them shipped from New Orleans cooked perfectly, then peel them yourself. We are from New England and ship 40 lbs at least once a year. We get them from Deanies Seafood. I think the season is April/May thru September but I could be wrong.
http://www.deanies.com/
I was sick during our last party and my sister peeled and froze 2 lbs for me, next weekend I'm using them to make two dishes: Crawfish Monica and Crawfish Jambalaya. Can't wait.

I see you are from Naples, do you ever go over to Ft. Lauderdale? Awesome awesome place for great New Orleans food (including buckets of fantastic crawfish) at Rosey Baby's in Lauderhill. They ship too. I love this place.
http://www.roseybaby.com/

[Val]

Hey. lex---I rarely drive over there (jeez, do I ever HATE I-95?! or what..it's horrid! This from a Jersey girl..used to drive NJ Turnpike amidst insane truckdrivers etc...but I-95 is gruesome!) Anyway, thank you for the referral to Rosey Baby's...I'm trying to find LA crawfish here in Naples...so far, to no avail...shame, shame!...a local fish monger (Captain Jerry's) referred me to Captain Kirk's...will find out soon WHO is worthy..if anyone! If nobody is worthy, then I'll have them shipped...that etouffee thread really got to me!

[lexpatti]

or maybe Randy at Randy's Seafood in Bonita/Naples. Good luck, love those little mudbugs!!! Do you get back to NJ much? Best Best Crawfish Festival in Sussex County NJ 1st weekend in June - unbelievable crawfish/ etouffee/ jambalaya, red beans & rice/etc. Music is fantastic (4 stages). It's for 3 days!!! New Orleans comes to NJ.
http://www.crawfishfest.com/
This was our second year, it's a must!!!

[Val]

Lex, I will try Randy's and I will also try Swan River here in Naples...I was totally surprised that Cap'n Jerry's did not sell LA crawfish (major disappointment)...and so it goes...thanks! Only go back to Monmouth County every few years...I think visiting my bro' who lives in Mandeville, LA and works in downtown New Orleans would be a better visit...I am VOWING to go to JazzFest in 2009! I have to add, it's great to know that Sussex County puts on such a great feast...wonder what the link is there...do you know???

[lexpatti]

wow, small world - I graduated from HS in Mandeville La.

I too keep saying I'm going to Jazz Fest again one year. I am going down for a conference early June, hopefully get my fill of crawfish.

btw, I included the link above for that NJ Festival.

[Val]

I saw the link...very good...thank you, again!

[Zeldog]

Theres no legal season but crawfish are available in Louisiana pretty much throughout spring and summer. As they become more available (typically around late May) they become less expensive. I may be a chauvinist, but Chinese crawfish are a waste of time. I bought some frozen here in SF. Rather bland tasting, and incredibly hard (and heavy, considering you pay by the pound) shells compared to our native bug.

Probably won't do any of you folks outside northern California any good, but imagine my surprise when I found live crawfish at my local asian market. Seems they raise them in the Sacramento Delta rice fields, just like in LA and TX. First rate.

[Val]

Zeldog, I only buy Gulf shrimp anymore...none of that Thai shrimp and I won't buy Chinese or Thai crawfish, either...I'll only buy domestic shellfish...thanks for your information...Sacramento crawfish would be okay, TX would be okay...I'll eventually find what I need! Wild-caught anything is best, you know?

[MakingSense]

You've got crawfish season a bit out whack there.
The real season for local wild-caught crawfish in South Louisiana (and also over into South Mississippi and South Texas) starts sometime in January - pretty much as soon as the weather warms up enough for them to start crawling up out of the mudholes where they've wintered over.
The season gets really going strong as the weather warms up and hits its peak in late March and April.
Toward the end of May, the shells are hard and the meat starts to get tough in the big old crawfish. The season is pretty well over by then.

The tourist trade and the demand for frozen tails keeps the farms going year round but those are never quite as good as the wild-caught. The non-natives and tourists don't know the difference.
Even the Chinese crawfish can make pretty passable dishes if cooks add as much spice as a lot of the tourists expect.

There are crawfish in every State in America.
The only thing that stops you from catching enough for dinner are local fishing limits. Most State game laws consider them " bait."

[lexpatti]

Thats funny, after living in La and eating crawfish, we would travel back to Lake Winnepasaukee every summer to our camp/lake house. We would try and catch enough crayfish to boil them - rediculous because it took forever adn then we still only had a tasting - something you don't want with crawfish - I WANT LBS IN FRONT ME!!!!

[MakingSense]

When we lived in Missouri, I had a chat with a DNR guy who told me the limit on crawfish was "forty" which I assumed meant forty "pounds." I said that I supposed we could deal with that but couldn't have a crawfish boil or anything.
He looked at me like I was crazy.
"You mean you're gonna EAT 'em??? Most folks just use 'em for bait!!!"

When I was a kid in LA, we went out in the swamps with my relatives and caught hundreds of pounds at a time and had huge family crawfish boils at somebody's hunting camp.
Late in the season, when the crawfish got big and kind of tough, we'd do it again to make an enormous pot of crawfish bisque. We'd split it up so everybody got quarts of it for their freezers. It took us all day with everybody working - from catching the crawfish to the finished bisque with the stuffed heads.

[lexpatti]

very kewl!! Did you see my post about the fantastic crawfish festival in NJ?? It's all New Orleans people that come up to cook.

[Monch]

Several are here: http://www.gumbopages.com/food/seafood/etouffee.html

The one from Chef John Folse's "Encyclopedia" is very good:

http://www.jfolse.com/recipes/seafood...