Louisiana Crawfish Étouffée Recipe

For Kerms, the water is supposed to be for the rice. Not the etouffee. I think that was your mistake.

This was delicious although the Cajun seasonings was a bit salty. I will either reduce or find a less saltier version. I didn't use water but instead I reserved the crawfish parts after removing the tails and boiled them in water creating a wonderful broth. I used that to boil my rice and add the cup to the roux. I also added a chopped red pepper and a celery stalk and 4 ounces of hot Italian sausage. Great flavor! I'm definitely making this again.

Real Cajun Étouffée doesn’t have tomato anything in it! You first make a light colored roux with the butter and flour, add your seasoning (onion, garlic, bell pepper & celery ) to the roux and cook until soft. Then add a can of chicken broth and a dash of liquid crab boil (don’t need this if using your own leftover boiled crawfish) and simmer for about 20 minutes. Add crawfish & simmer 5-10 minutes, adding green onion the last 3-4 minutes. Serve over rice. I lived most of my life in south Louisiana and married a Cajun. His Mom & grandmother taught me authentic Cajun cooking. When tomatoes in any form is used you are then making a “Creole” dish.

This etoufee is great. I added a small green bell pepper and a celery stick to the onions when I cooked those in the butter. And I did shrimp and crawfish. A few bay leaves are a nice touch as well. I’m from south Louisiana and this is pretty much restaurant quality etoufee around here. I saw some people say they had issues with it being too runny. That’s because the 6 cups of water are for the rice. They DO NOT go in the etoufee. I used about 1.5 cups of water in mine. The rice is meant to be cooked on the side and served over the etoufee.

Let me start with this is really good for a quick recipe. No joke. You can do a lot worse. I did change a few things. First I started with the "Holy Trinity" (onion, green pepper and celery) rather than just onion. It both bulks this up and makes it more authentic. Second, for the folks that say it has a floury taste -- indeed, if you're making this in 15 minutes, that's gonna happen. An authentic roux, when you add the flour to the butter/veggies you drop the heat to low and you stand there and stir for a while -- how long? Until it looks how you want it -- the longer you go, the darker it gets JUST DON'T BURN IT! Then proceed with the rest of the recipe. I agree with a few of the other commenters, it's very thick -- simple solution, add more water! I ended up at around a cup and 3/4 for the consistency I wanted. Last thing, while I thought it was an awesome add, I'd omit the green onion and add as a garnish or condiment, it was kind of heavy. Also, I admit to a cheat of my own, I used a 1lb bag of frozen/cooked crayfish meat (not just tails), it was awesome for me, but full disclosure :)

Solid base. Used about 6Tbs of butter, and was plenty. Added a bell pepper and two stalks celery, and about 6 cloves of garlic. With gluten free flour, I needed more like 2 cups of chicken broth to get it to the right consistency. Needed way more seasoning after all that - start by doubling next time. Crawfish tails come in 12oz pack here - use two next time.

Delicious!! We boiled crawfish heads and used the water for the flour / butter / crawfish roux, and ultimately used about 8-10 oz of tomato sauce. Also, we used about 10 garlic cloves, minced, and about 10 green onions and 1/4 white onion. Added about 1/4 cup Old Bay seasoning (didn't have Tony Chachere, but just as good!), 3 tablespoons garlic powder, 1 tablespoon Cooper's Old Time Pit BBQ salt and pepper mix. Also added some shrimp and andouille sausage. Following the major points of the recipe with all of our additions and changes made it taste straight from the French Quarter!

The "Most helpful critical review" of this recipe made it wrong. "Kerms" added the 6 cups of water, supposed to make his rice, to the etouffee. No wonder it was bad. I think the ratio of butter to broth is still too much. For 2-3 servings, 1 1/2 sticks of butter is too much. One stick will be fine and still have the buttery taste you want in an etouffee. Reduce flour to about 2 tbs and broth to about 1 1/2 cups. This will give a nice ratio of butter to broth and thicken up fine.

This is a great recipe. As others have stated, I use trinity and a blonde to Carmel roux. Since I use olive oil to make the roux, I only use half a stick of butter. I use a homemade chicken broth instead of plain water but add little a time to the smooth consistency we like. Instead of salt and pepper, we use a homemade Cajun blend seasoning to taste.

Instead of flour, use a couple of tbsp of cornstarch. It will thicken the gravy just as well and you'll get more of the crawfish taste instead of flour taste.

One of my favorite dishes when visiting New Orleans and it was just as it should be! I couldn’t find crawfish in my local grocery store so used “shrimp salad” so the tiny shrimps that look like crawfish. Also you do not HAVE to make three cups of rice it’s way too much. Stick to a cup if making for a smaller amount of people and follow the rice directions on the bag. I really liked this recipe tho and for those who had issues you only use one cup of water in the sauce so it can simmer and get thick (kind of like making taco meat).

This recipe is a total game-changer.

Haven't made it, now her teaching was easy to comprehend. Headed to store now to grab ingredients

So very good!! I’m so excited to have come across this recipe. Now that we live in Louisiana, we are all about learning the delicious cuisine.

Hubby wanted crawfish etoufee and i never made it from scratch before. It was my 1st time and hubby loved it. I loved it !!:

My new comfort recipe for sure.

I'm Cajun from Louisiana n love this kind of food...

Quick, effortless, and actually impressive.

I spent more time on the roux. I also added chopped celery and andouille sausage. Instead of white rice, I used red beans and rice. This is a decent recipe. Thank You

My husband enjoyed the crawfish etoufee emmensely. Even though I used 1 tablespoon of Cajun seasoning, it was still too salty for my taste. I will definitely decrease the seasoning to 1/2 tablespoon. I did not use the tomato sauce. I took the extra time to create the roux by continuing to stir flour mixture until it reached the brown I was looking for.