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2 pounds crawfish tails
1/4 pound butter
1 cup minced onion
1/2 cup minced bell pepper
1/2 cup minced celery
2 tablespoons crawfish fat
2 cups cold water
1 tablespoon corn starch
1/4 cup chopped green onion
1/4 cup chopped parsley
Creole seasoning blend, to taste
Salt, to taste
Pinch dried thyme
Pinch dried oregano
1 bay leaf
Season the crawfish tails with salt, plus a little black and cayenne pepper. Heat the butter in a saute pan and saute the onion, bell pepper and celery until the translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the crawfish fat (or extra butter if you don't have any), plus 1-1/2 cups water. Add the Creole seasoning, thyme, oregano, bay leaf and crawfish tails. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes. Dissolve the corn starch in the remaining 1/2 cup water and add to the mixture. Add the green onions and parsley, and cook an additional 5 minutes. Serve over hot long grain rice.
YIELD: Dinner for 8, with leftovers.

Here is a recipe for those who like a tomato base in their etoufee...

1 pound crawfish tails, with fat
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
1 medium - large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons bell pepper, minced
1/2 stalk celery, minced
Green onion tops
Fresh parsley
2 teaspoons tomato paste
Cayenne pepper
Freshly ground black pepper
Salt
2 tablespoons flour
1 - 2 cups water

Melt butter in pot, add flour and stir like hell. Add onions, bell pepper, celery and garlic. Cook until tender, and keep stirring. Add crawfish fat, if possible, and cook down 10-15 minutes. Add tails and tomato paste, then add water. Cook down for 20 minutes or so, but be careful not to overdo it. Add salt and peppers to taste. Cook a little more, then add chopped green onion tops and parsley and cook till ready.
Note: Some directions and amounts are intentionally vague ... use the challenge.

Yield: Meal for 4 men or 6 pansies.

Well, it looks good. The only problem is finding crawfish, crawfish fat and creole seasoning. Never, ever seen any of that around here. I never have eaten any cajun food. Wonder what I'm missing.

You can get the seasoning at your local grocery store, if not it can easily be purchased on-line. It depends upon the crawfish, but we do a "southern boil" in our backyard usually once a year, and have purchased live crawfish from

cajuncrawfish.com and the ship them FedEx and they arrive alive. Then you purge them. Not sure about buying local in your area, but possibly something your larger Wal-Marts with the live seafoods can help you out.

FYI, you can substitute small to medium peeled shrimp for the crawfish (which are just tiny fresh water lobsters) If you live somewhere where you can find lobster meat, that could make a dynamic dish!
Check you frozen seafood section of larger stores for 1 lb packages of Crawfish Tails.

When preparing the crawfish, I'm presuming that you have to peel them out of their shells...do they have to be deveined too (like you do with shrimp)?

Do most seafood shops (stores) normally remove the fat from crawfish (don't think I've ever seen an obese crawfish....)?

Since I missed the opportunity to try etouffee when I was in New Orleans after the hurricanes, I've been hunting for a good etouffee recipe, and I'm anxious to try this one!

Lone Star

Sorry it took so long to get back to you Lone Star. I wish they would fix the "view active topics" link again. I miss a lot of postings by having to hunt for them. Yes either shrimp or crawfish you need to peel and devein them or you would have one chewy meal in store for you. Packaged Crawfish tails usually have enough fat in them to give them flavor but if you peel your own save some fat from the bodies.

Not only do shrimp and presumably crawfish get 'chewy', they also end up tasting like mud (like you find in catfish that havent been deveined). Must be something that the 'bottom feeders' have in order to process all the silt that they're taking in scavanging ....