Crawfish Bisque

In light of recent posts about Swedish-style crawfish and trips to New Orleans, I figured I would post on a crawfish bisque I made with my mother over Memorial Day weekend during a trip to visit my folks in Baton Rouge. Unsurprisingly, one of my favorite things about trips home to Louisiana is the food, and not just the wonderful food from world class restaurants and roadside stands -- but the food cooked at home with recipes passed down through the family, family variations on classics, or just something that was printed in the paper that week.

This crawfish bisque started with about 30 pounds of crawfish we inherited from a neighbor's crawfish boil. (I shudder to think that those 30 pounds would cost about $750 in Sweden!) Here is a pile of mudbugs prior to the hard work of eating as many as could fill one's belly and pulling the tail meat from the rest.



These Louisiana crawfish were quite large, some the size of (very) small lobsters. You could actually get pretty decent sized bits of claw meat from these.



After getting a pile of a couple of pounds of tail meat, we set about making the bisque. First, a stock was created using the discarded heads (with claws) and tail shells and some celery and carrots broken in half. As that was going, we finely chopped several ribs of celery and an onion and several cloves of garlic and put it in a bowl. To that vegetable mixture, we added about 1/2 of the crawfish tails, also finely chopped, and then mixed the crawfish and vegetables together with a beaten egg, some bread crumbs, some crawfish fat (culled from the head during the process of pulling meat) and butter to create a stuffing. Now this is where the recipe we followed deviates from the traditional crawfish bisque. In traditional crawfish bisque, the heads and thorax of the discarded crawfish are cleaned thoroughly (scraped clean, which removes the eyes, antennae, etc.) and the meat and vegetable mixture is then stuffed into the thorax. That is an extraordinarily labor intensive process, so we followed a tip from the Baton Rouge paper, The Morning Advocate, which basically suggested making crawfish balls (similar to meatballs or balled up crabcakes) and baking those to add to the bisque. So we ended up with a baking sheet full of these (which were baked at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes -- although they could alternatively be sauteed in some oil if you prefer that approach):



For the gravy, we added chopped onion, celery, green pepper (the holy trinity of Cajun/Creole cooking) and garlic to a roux in a heavy stock pot and softened those vegetables. We then added the crawfish stock, some salt, pepper, Cajun seasoning (I used Slap Ya Mamafrom Ville Platte), a can of tomatoes (some recipes call for tomato sauce or tomato paste, others don't include any tomato at all), and cayenne pepper. Brought that to a boil, reduced heat to a low simmer and added the remaining crawfish tails and fat and then the crawfish balls and let it cook slowly for a while.



There are a number of Louisiana stew or soup-type dishes (gumbo and etouffee among them) that I prefer to make in advance and let sit in the refrigerator for a day to let the flavors mingle and intensify. So we let this one sit for a day and the next day reheated it on the stove, and finished it with some green onions and parsley on top prior to serving in bowls over a pile of rice for dinner. Good eating.



Overall, it was great and not that difficult to make (unless you are going the stuffing the shells route, in which case you are a better man/woman than me). You could definitely make it with frozen tails which are available up here and just substitute a fish or shellfish stock/broth for a broth made from the shells. If you do end up with a bunch of crawfish left over after a crawfish boil, this is a great way to make use of the leftover crawfish. (We also made a potato salad with the spicy potatoes left over from the crawfish boil, which was delicious as well.)

Matt,

Many thanks for the fascinating and beautiful post! The 'fishball' idea really seems a great one; how do you feel about the results in comparison with the labour-intensive stuffed approach?

Antonius

Antonius wrote:Matt,

Many thanks for the fascinating and beautiful post! The 'fishball' idea really seems a great one; how do you feel about the results in comparison with the labour-intensive stuffed approach?

Antonius

Thanks for the kind words Antonius. With respect to the "fishballs," I would say that the results are fairly similar in terms of taste (the stuffing used to stuff the shells is pretty much the same as that used to create the fishballs, although more binder may have to be used to make the fishballs stick together); the real difference is in the presentation. The traditional approach, in my mind, makes for a very impressive and visually exciting presentation. It's not uncommon for folks eating a crawfish bisque of the traditional preparation to place the empty shells in a circle around the rim of the bowl, either as a sign of eating prowess (somewhat akin to the disturbing trend of frat boys stacking their beer cups at baseball games to show the the world how many brews they have polished off) or as a method to ensure that no one got cheated on the stuffed shells. The only other real difference is textural -- it's a somewhat different mouthfeel to eat one of those fishballs rather than use your spoon or a fork to fish the stuffing out of a shell and eat that by itself or mix it in with the bisque -- in either case the stuffing generally is consumed in a smaller quantity at a time than in the fishball approach. Speaking of fishing the stuffing out of the shells, it is so good and addictive that kids and adults alike often (and particularly when eating at home) run a finger into the shell to make sure they get everything out.

I would do the traditional approach for a party or a special occassion, but the 1-2 hours of prep/cook time it adds must be considered. The fishballs also make for a good appetizer (either fried or baked), served by themselves with a dipping sauce (e.g., a remoulade) or served with slices of french bread or toast points, in which case the warm fishballs can be spread over the bread like a pate.

Matt,

Thanks for the detailed answer. If and when you make the full-blown stuffed shell version, be sure to take some pictures! Incidentally, the photos above are great.

Have you or do other Louisianans make roughly the same dish with any sea critters? It seems to me that it would be a nice way to prepare langoustines or one variety or other of lobster. For making the stuffed shells, it probably helps if the shells are not too small and the crayfish you show here are indeed large and not likely to be found in that size in most places. Indeed, I didn't know they ever got so big.

A

Antonius --

While the bisque concept is used with other shellfish (shrimp, crab, etc.) in Louisiana and obviously elsewhere as well, I have not been exposed to any preparation other than crawfish that creates a "stuffing" like that described above that is then included in the gravy/soup.

I found a fairly interesting article from an Acadiana independent newspaper about the history of eating crawfish in Louisiana Cajun country and some crawfish preparations. The article also includes a photo of a bowl of crawfish bisque with the traditional preparation (third photo from the top on the right).

Gorgeous post, Matt!

(I shudder to think that those 30 pounds would cost about $750 in Sweden!)

I wouldn't be surprised to see that monstrous specimen you snapped a photo of to nearly fetch 750 dollars in Sweden. Wow!