Crawfish Elegante’

I’ve shared so many of my Grandmother’s recipes here that I’m a bit worries my cousins are going to hunt me down for giving away family secrets. Well, I would be worried except that my cousins and I all feel the same way about our Grandmother… that she was the warmest, kindest, most loving woman on the planet and that if we can be just a little bit like her in our lives, we’ll be doing things right.

Somehow she made all of her children and her grandchildren believe that we were her absolute most favorite (and, you know what, I bet we ALL were.) She was forever sewing something for a friend, or cooking something delicious for one of us, or making up something fun for us to do together.

My cousin, Amy, gave us the most wonderful Christmas gift a couple of years ago…she painstakingly typed up and bound all of Grandmother’s recipes into a cookbook of sorts.I use it every week at least once, and I’d bet they do, too (if they haven’t memorized the recipes yet.) Grandmother has some Louisiana roots, which is why a bunch of her best recipes have a creole/New Orleans flair.

Her recipe for Crawfish Elegante’ is a super delicious, very versatile dish that can be made ahead, frozen, and eaten in a variety of ways. It’s perfect for spring when crawfish are in season, but also pretty great whenever as you can get frozen peeled crawfish at the store. Here, I’m sharing it as a dip with toasted New Orleans French Bread, but it’s also great over rice as a main dish OR as a filling for puff pastries. We also had it as a catfish topping this same night, and as my cousin Virginia would say “it didn’t suck.”

Crawfish Elegante'

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

40 mins

 

Author: Biz Harris

Serves: 8-10

What You Need

• 1lb peeled crawfish tails (you can buy fresh and peel them or buy the ready-peeled packages in the store)
• 1 stick of butter
• 4 Tablespoons Olive Oil
• 1 bunch green onions, chopped very fine
• ¼ Cup chopped parsley, chopped very fine
• 1 pint half and half
• 3 Tablespoons Dry Sherry or substitute
• salt, pepper, cayenne pepper to taste
• 4 Level tablespoons all-purpose Flour
• dash of Hot sauce

What to Do

1. In a skillet, saute’ your crayfish tails in the olive oil for 5-ten minutes or until you see them curl up like shrimp. Don’t overcook them as you’ll keep cooking them in the sauce later.
2. Pat the orange “fat” off of the crawfish with a paper towel until you’ve removed as much excess as possible. Don’t rinse them as you’ll lose all the flavor altogether.
3. Set the Crawfish aside.
4. In your skillet, heat the stick of butter and saute’ the green onions and parsley. Once they are thoroughly wilted. Gradually, spoonful by spoonful add in the flour and mix it completely, then add in the half and half, just a bit at a time, stirring constantly as the sauce thickens. DO NOT let this come to a high boil (if it bubbles slightly for a minute or so, that’s good but boiling it with curdle everything.)
5. You’ll know the sauce is right when you can drag the spoon through and you have a path to the bottom of the pan left briefly.
6. Add the sherry and the crawfish tails into the pot and season with the peppers, tabasco, and salt. Don’t cook for more than a minute and then remove the pan for the heat.
7. Serve as a dip with sliced,toasted french bread and freeze any remaining dip for use at a later date. You can also serve over white rice as a main dish or use it as a delicious filling for puff pastries.

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