Crawfish Bisque | Southern Cooking | Chef Alden B

all right y'all crawfish bisque is one of my all-time favorite meals but I only make it once a year because all the work that goes into it there's a lot of shortcuts to it but I like to make it from scratch because it makes it that much more special so today I'm gonna walk y'all through how I take the Crawfish break it down then I'm gonna use every part of this crawfish from the head to stuff it the shells to make the stock and then the meat to make the stuffing that goes into the shells we'll even get into how I make my roof from scratch because everything in the South needs a good Rule and I'm telling y'all it's pressure let's get into it so boom you want to start off with some good crawfish I made these crawfish from scratch I'll link the video to how I boil crawfish right here but I use these crawfish peel them ate some and then we started off with our crawfish bisque now making crawfish bisque is a process you might want to take a couple days to do this we're gonna get a bowl of we'll keep our heads in we'll clean those later then a bowl that we're gonna keep all the shells in that we'll prepare a stock with and then of course a bowl for the meat first we want to remove the body from the head next you want to make sure that you take the eyes off the Crawfish because you do not want it looking back at you to do this we're going to put our pointer finger right inside and then we want to pull back firmly but softly because crawfish shells are gentle you'll all come out we're going to remove that put it with our shells and then we're gonna remove everything else out of the head and then put this in a bowl with the heads that will clean later however you do it just make sure you remove the eyes and the antennas and of course you got to eat the big claws in between because it's full of flavor you want to make sure you're only saving the biggest heads the stuff with the rest you can just throw in with the scraps save the meat from here you're probably exhausted so you can save all this for tomorrow but for now I'm gonna start peeling the meat from the shell so I get that over with to peel a crawfish you want to firmly pinch on the tail and lightly pull it out and you'll devein it that easy but again I've been in New Orleans peeling crawfish all my life so it's second nature with time and practice you can do it too crack your shell pull your meat out and we're gonna put everything to the side for tomorrow the next day we got right back into it for the Crawfish we're gonna use for our stuffing I use about four cups you could also use about two pounds of Frozen crawfish just make sure that the Louisiana certified but if you can always use it fresh from scratch and do it yourself but if you can't Frozen Louisiana Crawfish work perfectly fine now a lot of people will tell you to put your crawfish in the food processor I don't like that you didn't spend so much time on these crawfish you don't want little fine pieces you want to chop it up by hand so you can have nice pieces of crawfish in it so you could fill with your words for again this is all my preferences as with all my recipes you can doctor it up to your specific liking but this is just how I do mine I like my crawfish have a little bit of chunkiness to it do it how you want let's proceed once you've chopped up your crawfish I'll put it in a food processor whatever you like we're gonna go ahead and put that to the side and get started on cleaning our heads now for the Crawfish heads I had them in my deep freezer overnight so I'm just gonna run some water on them to get that chill off now we're gonna get a bowl of put our clean crawfish in a lot of people just use a toothbrush and scrub it but you can really just use your hand just work it around and get all of the stuff out of the shell as long as it's clean you're good to go go ahead put that to the side in a separate bowl and just how I said in the beginning how there's many shortcuts just how you can use frozen Louisiana crawfish tails you could also buy the already clean crawfish heads they're pretty expensive and they kind of small I don't recommend them but if that's all you have you can use it and you can also always use anything else you want to put your stuff in and you don't have to put them in the heads now that we went ahead and finished cleaning all the Crawfish heads we're gonna fill this bowl up with water and then we're gonna add some baking soda to it we're gonna let this sit in the baking soda while we get everything else together and it'll really make these shells more appliable when we go to here to go stuff them later and I told y'all we're using every part of this crawfish we're gonna go ahead and fill up a stock pot with about eight quarts of water then we're gonna go ahead and throw in all of our crawfish scraps everything you throw away then you can go ahead and season this to your liking if you want I like to add in a little chicken bouillon along with some Cajun seasoning a lot of people could add whatever they want whatever is your preference however you want to Google it and see how you make a crawfish stock do that you can really just use the shells right out the boil and it'll be flavorful enough we're gonna bring that to a boil we're gonna reduce it to a simmer and then we're gonna cover this up for at least an hour and a half to two hours to really let those flavors get into our stock once all those flavors have come together we're gonna get a colander and we're gonna pour our stock in to strain it to make sure that we don't have any of those shells left in there I'm gonna let this cool off and you can use this for so many different dishes I like to freeze them in quart bags or containers and then defrost them and then use them into any recipe from etouffee crawfish pasta and this one as well I'm gonna use this stock for this crawfish bit so you can use it for a lot of different things make sure you save it make it once so you don't have to make it again added all our prepping of the Crawfish are done we're gonna get into our vegetables you want to rinse them off and then we're going to cut up our onions and then we're gonna put them into a food processor this part unlike the Crawfish we get blend down we want those flavors in there but we don't need big old chunks of vegetables and our stuff and I personally like to use half a red bell pepper and half a green bell pepper and with onions and bell pepper you know you got to come with the celery the Holy Trinity of course has to go into this dish it's Southern now go ahead and blend this up to your liking you could also chop it by hand the choice is yours as for the green onion I don't add this to the food processor because we don't want this to saute with the vegetables as it Cooks way faster and I like to add the green onion and parsley after everything is cooked because it adds a little bit of freshness to the dish I promise y'all I wouldn't leave your own cut this up save it to the side we're gonna put this in after now all of this is going in just the stuffing we have to do this same thing all over again because the same vegetables are going into a gravy biscuit whatever you want to call it now if you're from the south you know all about this Magnalite pot it's one of those pots that's passed down from generation to generation they don't even make these no more if you get a magnet like pot nowadays it's just not going to be the same quality so take these type of things for granted when your parents or your grandparents or your great-grandparents hand this down to you because it's special now it wouldn't be a true Cajun dish if we didn't make a root from scratch you want to come with equal parts fat to flour now when making a lighter Roux you could go ahead and use butter being that it won't have to cook for long but if you're making a deep dark Roux you always want to use some type of oil you don't want to use butter because it'll burn very quickly and also never make it real with olive oil my go-to is vegetable oil now we're going to let this cook on a medium to low heat as you can see it's already starting to get brown this step right here took about 20 minutes when it comes to making a roux you want to go low and slow and never leave that pot because it can burn and you don't want it smelling like burnt popcorn in your kitchen this is well we wanted a root can be fairly easy as long as you're patient with it now at this point I turned the heat off and I added those vegetables that we processed earlier into the pot your rule gets slightly darker and seize up as you add your vegetables in so we're going to let that saute in there for about five to ten minutes until they're nice and tender it should all look a little something like this now from here we're gonna add our garlic you can chop your garlic up oh I like to just use garlic paste because it's very convenient we're gonna add that in there and then we're gonna mix this up till it gets nice and fragrant you only got to do this for about maybe even a minute so at this point in the process I was completely exhausted and I kind of messed up on this step of the recipe these are some crawfish from a boil I had a couple weeks ago that I vacuum sealed you don't want to add crawfish to this this soon because they're already cooked and you want to add it after the biscuits simmered I realized halfway don't pour in the Crawfish in that I shouldn't have done this so again ignore that add that after the bisque December now we're going to go ahead and add in our green onion and parsley mix that up thoroughly and again you can add the Crawfish now but it's just better to add the Crawfish later because they already cooked as I said now you want to warm your crawfish stock before you add it in or you're just going to be a bunch of smoke going up in the kitchen never ever add a cold stock to a hot Roux now I poured about eight cups of the stock into the pot we're gonna bring it to a boil reduce it to a cinnamon and we're gonna let that cover up and cook for about 45 minutes to an hour now this is the part of crawfish bisque that's so special to me the stuffing we're gonna go ahead and melt down some butter into a pot and then come with bukudos vegetables that we processed earlier again onions celery and bell pepper we're gonna get that coated up and all that butter and we're gonna let this saute for about five to ten minutes after that 10 minutes you can add your regular minced garlic or again the garlic paste garlic does not take long to cook so again we're gonna mix that up for about a minute until it becomes fragrant and now the best point we're gonna come with as many crawfish tails the Lord of loves I need all that at this point we're going to cut the heat and add in some green onion and parsley to add that freshness and then about a cup of plain bread crumbs and then a cup of that crawfish stock that you made and if you don't have crawfish stock you could always use Seafood stock if you don't have seafood stock use all reliable chicken stock it works perfectly fine and for this part of the stuffing you can go to your desired uh texture if you want to add more bread crumbs add that if you want to add more liquid add more liquid now we're going to go ahead and season this up I came with some onion powder black pepper granulated garlic sweet paprika not smoked paprika and then some Cajun seasoning remember if you ain't sneezing it ain't seasoned add your favorite spice Blends and just look at that yes Lord now once that cools off slightly we're gonna get an oven safe dish and we're gonna spray it with cooking spray or rub it down in butter now we're gonna rinse our crawfish heads off and you can see how much more flexible it is now that we took it out of the baking soda a lot of people stuff the Crawfish heads by hand but I like to use a Piping Bag because it's just simpler that way you put your hand at the end of the Crawfish head and then you just push the stuffing right in it we're gonna over stuff these things we're not stingy on none of that this is why I told you all in the beginning this is a tedious process it's gonna take multiple days to do by the time you get to stuff in these heads your back gonna be hurting I'm telling you it's toe up this is why I make it once again freeze it but I'm telling y'all it's a taste that you have to experience at least once in your life and all of this work is well worth it now we're gonna throw these in the oven at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes now we're going to go ahead and check on our best this is when I told y'all you should add the crawfish tails right now it's okay that I add in a minute but they just don't look as fresh as they would if I'd have just added fresh crawfish tails in right there but it still does the job and surprisingly by the grace of God they still had a good texture so I wasn't tripping too hard now your grieve you should start thickening but if it's not to your liking you can add a little slurry to it which is a mixture of cornstarch and water now you can add your favorite seasonings I like to just hit it with some Cajun seasoning because it has everything you need in it mix it all up taste it to your liking and then we're gonna go ahead and check on our crawfish bisque when you look at your crawfish you can just see this is one of the most beautiful things you'll ever look at look at that just oh my God perfectly it's just perfect it's perfect everything about this is perfect I took about half of these heads and I put them into the gravy the rest I froze and I'm Gonna Save for whenever else I want to make a crawfish throughout the next couple of months we're gonna turn our fire off and we're gonna just let these heads soak into this Bist for about five to ten minutes and after all our whole work this is gonna be our finished product right here it just looks amazing I love this this is my favorite dish of all time and to make my life easy I always cook my rice beforehand freeze it and then we put it in baggies in serving sizes that's big enough for us to eat as a family all you got to do is defrost it and if you're in Louisiana a lot of things are eaten with rice so having rice on hand is is very essential to us so now all you have to do is plate everything up and just like my name you're all done if y'all enjoy these Southern meals that are so dead to my heart make sure that y'all like subscribe and turn on those push notifications and check out these other videos that I have on hand as well thank y'all

Channel: Chef Alden B

Views: 29,711

Keywords: crawfish, bisque, southern cooking, roux, New Orleans, Comfort FOOD, Seafood, Louisiana, Flychefaldenb, recipesbyaldenb, Chef all done, if you aint sneezing it aint seasoned

Id: bDs6vzZqf3Q

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 17 2023