🇺🇸 United States · South Louisiana (Cajun and Creole)
Crawfish bisque
The Cajun form of a Louisiana soup: crawfish tails simmered in a roux-based gravy of onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic, traditionally served with crawfish heads stuffed with a seasoned crawfish and breadcrumb dressing, over rice.
Origin and history
The author of Gumbo Pages calls crawfish bisque perhaps the grandest dish of Cajun and Creole cooking. Chef John Folse notes that early Cajuns stuffed cleaned crawfish heads with a spicy crawfish mixture and simmered them in a roux-based stew, while Creoles, influenced by European cooking, made a lighter bisque of tails in shellfish stock and cream. The sources do not give a date for either.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 3 h 30 min
- Hands-on
- 2 h 15 min
Ingredients
- 5.5 kg12 lb live crawfish, boiled, tails peeled, yellow fat saved, 36 heads cleaned
- 2 packets crab, shrimp and crawfish boil seasoning, for the boiling water
- 2 lemons, quartered, for the boiling water
- 4 tbsp butter, for the bisque roux
- 80 ml1/3 cup peanut oil or other neutral oil, for the bisque roux
- 85 g2/3 cup all-purpose flour, for the bisque roux
- 2 medium onions, finely minced
- 1 medium bell pepper, finely minced
- 2 ribs celery, finely minced
- 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
- 720 ml3 cups shellfish stock or water
- 2 tsp Creole seasoning
- 1 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, plus thyme, 1 1/4 tsp
- 80 ml each1/3 cup each chopped green onion tops and parsley, added at the end
- 363 dozen cleaned crawfish heads, for stuffing
- 2.5 tbsp oil and 5 tbsp flour2 1/2 tbsp oil and 5 tbsp flour roux for the stuffing
- 1 medium and 1 small onion and bell pepper for the stuffing, finely minced
- 125 ml1/2 cup stock or water, for the stuffing
- 1 large egg, beaten, for the stuffing
- 75 g1 1/4 cups plain French bread crumbs, for the stuffing
- 2.5 tbsp each2 1/2 tbsp each parsley and green onion, plus 2 1/2 tbsp melted butter, for the stuffing
- salt, black pepper, flour for dusting, salt 2 tsp for the bisque and 1 1/4 tsp for the stuffing, pepper to taste
- about 900 g cooked4 1/2 cups cooked long-grain white rice, to serve
Method
-
1. Boil the boil seasoning and lemons in a large pot of water, add the live crawfish and boil 10 minutes; drain, ice them down, and let them soak in the spiced water so they take on seasoning.
-
2. Pull off the tails and peel them, keeping the small flap of meat over the vein; save the yellow fat from the heads in a separate bowl.
-
3. Scrape the heads clean, including eyes and antennae, until each is an open tube; split the tails and fat in two equal piles, half for the stuffing and half for the bisque.
-
4. Stuffing: make a roux with the oil and flour, cook the onion and pepper in it until tender, add the minced half of the tails and the fat, and simmer 15 minutes.
-
5. Stir in the stock, salt, black pepper, cayenne, crumbs, egg, parsley, green onion and melted butter, adjusting with a little more stock or crumbs until it holds together.
-
6. Stuff each head, dust it with flour and bake at 175 C (350 F) for 15 minutes, or fry until golden; refrigerate (the day before is ideal).
-
7. Bisque: make a roux from the butter, oil and flour over low to medium heat, stirring without stopping, until it turns light brown and does not scorch.
-
8. Add the onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic, and cook until soft and the roux is the color of peanut butter.
-
9. Take the pot off the heat, cool a minute, and whisk in the stock a little at a time until smooth.
-
10. Add the remaining tails and fat, Creole seasoning, cayenne, thyme, salt and pepper, and any leftover stuffing, and simmer on low 15 minutes.
-
11. Add the stuffed heads and simmer on low 30 minutes; stir in the green onion tops and parsley just before serving.
-
12. Mound rice in each bowl, ladle the bisque over it and arrange stuffed heads around the rim, six per person.
Notes
- Scaled to about 60 percent from the Cajun recipe on Gumbo Pages (20 lb of crawfish and 5 dozen heads; it states no yield, but its serving custom of six heads per person implies about ten servings); a smaller batch is hard to do because the stuffed heads need a whole crawfish each. If you cannot find live crawfish, cooked peeled tails make a bisque without the stuffed heads, but it is a different, lighter dish.
- Louisiana uses the name for two dishes. Chef John Folse describes the Cajun one with stuffed heads simmered in a roux-based stew, and a lighter Creole one of tails in shellfish stock finished with heavy cream, with no stuffed heads. His own printed recipe is the Creole form: 2 lb tails, a white roux, tomato sauce, 2 quarts of shellfish stock, thyme, tarragon and a pint of cream, with optional sherry (6 to 8 servings). This recipe is the Cajun form.
- By tradition, according to Gumbo Pages, everyone gets the same number of stuffed heads, and the empty shells go around the rim of the bowl so they are easy to count; eat the stuffing out of the heads with your fingers or the tail end of a fork.
- The stuffing can be made a day ahead; the roux must be stirred constantly.
Adapted from Gumbo Pages (Cajun and Creole cooking), Crawfish Bisque and WAFB, Chef John Folse's bisque of Louisiana crawfish.
At the festivals
No festival we list has printed it on a menu yet.