bretsam":1hagdspd said:
Hey Jogeephus, I sure would like that crawfish boudin recipe, if it's not a family secret.
retty: Thanks.
Ok on one condtion. Would appreciate your feedback. Can't make it more better till I get feedback. Besides, this was a lot of typing but thank goodness for cut and paste. :nod:
Anyhow, here is how I make it and I hope you enjoy it.
Depending on the size crawfish you will probably need 10 lbs of raw crawfish to begin with. Boil in old bay seasoning and water till done. Let cool. Clean the tails and put them in a bowl until you have one pound of cleaned tails. If you run short, you can make up the difference with shrimp but see the note at the bottom on how to make the adjustment.
Recipe will make 2-3 lbs of sausage
4 tablespoons of butter
1 cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon of chopped shallot (no big loss if you can't find this)
1 clove of garlic, minced up good
1/2 red or yellow pepper fire roasted and peeled then chopped up fine (if you can't buy this you can just
put pepper in the oven until you can peel the skin off it.
1.5 cups of cooked rice (cooled)
1/4 cup of heavy cream (don't go skimping with that half and half crop. Heavy means the good stuff)
1/2 cup of chopped green onions
1/2 cup chopped parsley
1 egg (ogranically and free range of course)
2 tablespoons of sherry
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
2 tsp of fresh tarrragon or 1/2 tsp dried
1 tablespoon of tomato paste (ketchup would be OK as this is mostly for color)
2 teaspoons of paprika (sweet hungarian if you got it)
1 teaspoon of fresh thyme or 1 tsp if you only have dried
1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon of lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper (sometimes called red pepper)
1/2 teaspoon of grated nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
With medium heat melt butter in frying pan.
Add onions, shallots and garlic. Cover and cook for 10 minutes or vegetables are soft. Set aside to cool
In a food processor, put the crawfish in and hit the pulse button a couple of times. What you are wanting to do is chop it up coursely but not make a paste out of it. It should have texture. Could use a knife but processer is much faster.
In a bowl put the chopped pepper, cooked vegies, crawfish, rice and cream and mix. Once mixed add the rest of the ingredients and mix well but you may want to hold off on the egg till you taste it to be sure you have the right amount of salt and pepper. Once you like it, add egg and mix well. Egg is your binder.
Chill for 30 minutes in fridge.
Stuff in hog casings but do not twist or turn into links. Best to leave about 2 inches of unstuffed casing at each end so you can tie the ends off and don't stuff too tight cause the rice will swell.
I prefer to steam them from here but you can poach them as well but you will lose some flavor.
Shrimp Adjustment
If you run short on crawfish you can "make crawfish" with shrimp. Shrimp and crawfish are much alike but crawfish is fatty so you need to make up for the loss of fat. To do this, simply peel the shrimp and put the peelings in the frying pan along with a tablespoon or two of butter. On med high heat cook the peelings in the butter so the shrimp flavor will be infused in the butter. Once you feel you've got this done just pour the contents in a colander and press the mixture and the butter will run out into a container and mix this with the chopped shrimp.
This is the basis for my alligator gar boudin next time I get my hands on one. No more of the 2-3 lbs of sausages. I'm thinking 15 lbs and a keg of something cold.