What is Crawfish Etouffee?

Series Summary

The term étouffée derives from the French verb "étouffer," which means "to smother, stifle or suffocate." While crawfish suffer this fate in preparation for this Creole dish, our expert's recipe insures a much more exciting fate for your taste buds. With more spice and a thicker sauce than the ever-popular gumbo, crawfish etouffee has long been a staple of Louisiana cuisine. If gumbo allows for-even encourages-a mixture of many different ingredients, etouffee places more specific demands on the first-time chef...forget to stir the roux and the dish is a total loss!

Let our Expert Village chef lead you through the challenges of roux preparation and other potential pitfalls of this cajun delicacy. From chopping and stirring to advanced seasoning, this free video series will begin with the basics of this seafood dish and ultimately demonstrate how to season it to perfection. Your friends and family will marvel at your mouth-watering feast. Let the good times roll, or in terms of canjun French, "laissez les bon temps roullet!"

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Karl James owner of Creolesoul catering in Round Rock, Texas on behalf of Expert Village I'm here to show you craw fish etouffee. Craw fish etoufee, etoufee for meaning smothered and what we are going to do is take the craw fish and smoother them in a brown sauce. Just like most traditional receipts creole receipts we are going to use a roux and we are going to use craw fish otherwise known back in Louisiana as mud bugs. The other thing about cooking this dish is that if you can't find craw fish you can replace that with shrimp and then you have shrimp etoufee but what I like to do is I give you the basic receipt and then I'm going to show you what I like to add and that is what cooking is really all about is adding a little of your own flare. Whatever you think you taste good together just add it in there. Check it out anyway lets get started. "