Crawfish Etouffee

Most Helpful Positive Review

Having lived in Louisiana my whole life I can tell you that this is about as "authentic" a recipe as you can get. Much better than the ones you will try with condensed soup as an ingredient. The only thing I add is about half of a can of tomato paste (one of the really small cans). This gives the dish a nicer color and a bit richer flavor. I will also sometimes season my crawfish with powdered Zatarains crawfish boil seasoning instead of the hot sauce to add that "boiled crawfish taste" which is such a great flavor. If you choose to use the crawfish boil seasoning I would caution to use it sparingly and add a little at a time because this seasoning has quite a bit of heat.

I've made this 3 times; it's a great recipe. The first time, I made it exactly as the recipe states. The second, I used chicken broth instead of the water and Cajun seasoning instead of the seasonings and hot sauce (simplified and improved). Liked it better with my alterations, but tastes great the way it is, too. The third time, I used cubed chicken instead of crawfish - very good.

It was my 1st time to cook crawfish etouffee and my husband just loved it, saying it tastes like an authentic Louisiana etouffee. I used chicken stock instead of just water. I also recently came upon Emeril's recipe of etouffee and was surprised that everything is very similar except that he adds cayenne pepper.