Crawfish Bisque recipe (with pics)

2 heads of garlic, chopped fine (use fresh garlic, not the stuff in a jar)
2 bunches of green onions, chopped
1/2 stalk of celery, chopped (or 1/2 head if you call the individual ribs "stalks")
1/2 bunch of parsley, chopped fine (again, use fresh parsley, not dried jar stuff)
5 medium onions, chopped

4 packs of crawfish tails, including juice

2 loaves of french bread, stale (or toasted if all you have is fresh)
4 eggs, beaten

3- 6 oz. cans tomato paste
3 - 16 oz. cans of tomato sauce
9 cups water

300 cleaned crawfish heads (around 2.5 bags)

Copious amounts of Tony's or Slap Ya Mama cajun seasoning

*Optional: a few handfuls of crawfish claws (from boiled crawfish)



Drizzle a bit of oil in the bottom of a large pot and fry off the seasonings til tender (I don't measure the oil, but I'm guessing I use around 2-3 tablespoons).



Drain the juice from the packs of crawfish into the pan, then chop the tails. I chop them by hand - the food processor tends to smash them and chop them too fine. You want the tails chopped into 2 or 3 pieces so you still have relatively large chunks - don't cut them too small. It's a bit easier if you chop them while they are still slightly frozen and clumped together.



Add the chopped tails to the pot and cook a few more minutes. Add some Tony's or SYM seasoning (I don't measure, just start sprinkling generously).



Now you're going to start adding the french bread. Ideally, you want very stale french bread that will break apart easily. If you can only find fresh french bread, cut into sliced pieces (just like for a poboy) and put in the oven (around 325°) until hard and brittle. Soak each piece in water then wring it out, then pull apart in tiny pieces and add into pot. Be sure to wring the water out well first, because you don't want to incorporate too much water into the stuffing mixture and make it too wet and sticky.





Mix well after you add each piece. After all the bread is in, add 4 beaten eggs and mix. I also throw in some more Tony's or SYM seasoning here.



*Now here's the key: you want to get the stuffing to the right consistency so you can easily pack it into the heads, but the consistency is going to vary depending on how much water you incorporated from the soaked french bread. However, after you let the stuffing cool, it is going to dry and thicken up a good bit, so it's hard to tell right away if it's the proper consistency or not - this simply comes from experience. But generally it's going to be a bit too wet and runny after you've added the egg mixture. So at this point I add some bread crumbs to thicken up the stuffing. Obviously it's a judgement call on how much to add, but I just sprinkle a bit in until it feels right. You can use regular bread crumbs for this, but Reising's makes real french bread crumbs like this:



Now obviously you could try using these from the start instead of soaking stale french bread in water and adding it into the pot, but if you do it will end up being too dry. Make the extra effort to do it right and just finish off with a little bit of the bagged bread crumbs just to get the consistency right.

Here's the finished stuffing...



It's best to spread it out on a large pan so it will cool quicker, and like I said before, it will dry out some as it cools - so don't add too much bread crumbs into the pot and make it too dry before cooling.
Now the fun part - time to start stuffing heads.



And thank God for Phillips Seafood - they did all the dirty work for you.



My mom and grandma used to peel 20+ pounds of boiled crawfish for the tails and clean all the heads themselves, but thankfully today you can just buy packs of tails AND bags of cleaned heads. Today's Ketch in Chalmette usually has them in stock - around 125 heads/bag (100-150 depending on size) for around $10 if I remember correctly. This recipe will get you to around 250-300 heads, which is around 2.5 bags. Varies depending on size of heads - I've had this same recipe yield as high as 315 and as low as 225.
You really want to overstuff the heads a bit, because you want a good bit of the stuffing leaking out into the gravy to make it nice and thick.



Now for the base (or gravy). Now I don't have a pot big enough to accommodate 300 heads, so I make 2 pots - 1 large and 1 extra large. Also, 300 heads in one pot makes for difficult stirring. In my extra large pot I put 2 - 16 oz. cans of tomato sauce, 2 - 6 oz. cans of tomato sauce. I add around 6 cups of water (can add a bit more later if necessary, but you want it to stay pretty thick). In the other pot, I put half of those amounts (1 -16 oz. tomato sauce, 1 - 6 oz. tomato paste, and 3 cups of water). Mix it well and cook for a few minutes to blend. Again, I throw in some more Tony's or SYM here.

This next step is optional - if you want to boost the flavor, add a pile of large boiled crawfish claws. Eating them is also optional, but having a bunch of claws in there while it cooks will add some flavor just like using a stock in other recipes. Don't use small claws because they are a pain in the arse to pick out later. But during the season when we eat boiled crawfish, whenever I run across big claws I'll pull them off and save them in the freezer for when I make bisque. Likewise, feel free to throw a pack or two of crawfish tails into the pot. I tried this last time I cooked it, but really didn't notice much difference. The tails shriveled down to minuscule proportions as it cooked and I didn't really notice any marked difference in the flavor. But the claws do help.



Final step is adding the heads. I throw 2/3 into the extra large pot (around 200) and 1/3 into the smaller pot (around 100).



After you've added the heads, just cook it on low heat for a good hour or two. Keep stirring periodically so it doesn't stick, but don't stir too vigorously - you want a bunch of the stuffing to get incorporated into the gravy, but if you over-stir you're going to end up losing too much from the heads. Cook at least 1 hour (preferably closer to 2) so it can really thicken up good. Should look like this:





Serve over rice.


This is virtually an all day affair, but the payoff is well worth it.