So Mardi Gras is next week, which means that for the next few days, at least in Mardi Gras-celebrating locales it’s kind of a gastronomical free-for-all where things like Jambalaya and Gumbo and King Cake and Dirty Rice and Shrimp & Grits and Meat Pies and Beignets and Red Beans & Rice and Pralines are acceptable wherever, whenever, and you’re not allowed to feel guilty about eating them in unlimited quantities.
Even though seafood is kind of at the heart of Louisiana deliciousness, we only have one other Louisiana seafood recipe. Part of it is because if it came from the water, my family won’t eat it. Secondly, the seafood that’s readily available here isn’t always easy to find everywhere else, so I’m hesitant, lest you find yourself unable to locate crawfish and hate me. Forever. Finally, I have a hard time cooking seafood. It creeps me out. The smell lodges itself in my brain and my family thinks I’m crazy when I’m convinced I can smell fish 3 days later. In case you hadn’t noticed, if you love to eat seafood more than any other thing in the universe, Our Best Bites might be failing you a little.
But.
My friend Jeni, who I’ve mentioned before because she keeps me supplied with gossip and delicious recipes, got this recipe when she lived in New Orleans. Now…Jeni has lived here most of her life and has lived in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, so lest anyone tell me that I suck and should go away and never post Louisiana food again, this recipe comes from a Louisiana girl.
The first time I ever had seafood bisque was in New Orleans a few years ago (with Jeni, incidentally). Now…I had just developed an abscessed tooth and was on a fairly hefty dose of Lortab, but it was both the most delicious (and the most hilarious) meal I’d ever eaten. When I got the chance, I started looking for a seafood bisque recipe, and they were all ridiculous complicated (Emeril’s involved shelling shrimp and then making a stock with their shells and heads. Um…it’s just not gonna happen. People always ask why we don’t ever want to do a show like Chopped and that is exactly why. We’d somehow get suckered into making a dessert with shrimp shells, mint leaves, and Twinkies.)
This is not that recipe. In fact, it may involve more canned ingredients than anything else we’ve ever posted on the blog. I AGONIZED about whether or not to post it because we tend to eschew the canned soup experience. But seriously…it’s so delicious and so easy and if canned cream of potato soup gives you the heebie jeebies, you can always make a homemade version–just omit the poultry seasoning and simmer it with 1/2 pound of chopped red potatoes until they’re tender.
For the fresh ingredients, you’ll need a stick of salted butter, a green bell pepper, a medium onion, and 1 1/2-2 pounds of crawfish tails (you can find them in the frozen seafood section; if you can’t find them, you could use lobster or crab, but those could be prohibitively expensive. Shrimp is also a possibility).
In a large soup pot, melt the butter. While the butter is melting, mince the pepper and onion.
Add the minced pepper and onion and sauté until tender and fragrant. While the onions and peppers are cooking, chop the crawfish meat into bite-sized pieces.
Add the crawfish tails, a tablespoon of Cajun or Creole seasoning (like Tony Chachere’s) and stir to combine.
Now. Warm up your can-opening hand. Check this out.
That’s 2 cans of creamed corn, 4 cans of cream of potato soup, and 3 cans of evaporated milk. Bust out your can opener and add all the ingredients to the pot and bring to a simmer (don’t boil–bad things will happen). Season to taste with additional Tony’s and Tabasco sauce and serve. Makes about 12-14 servings.
Quick & Easy Crawfish & Corn Bisque
Recipe from Jeni Mangum
Ingredients:
1 stick salted butter
1 green bell pepper, minced
1 medium onion, minced
1 1/2-2 pounds crawfish tails (available in the frozen seafood section), rinsed, drained, and chopped
4 cans cream of potato soup*
1 tablespoon+ Cajun seasoning (like Tony Chachere’s)
3 12-ounce cans evaporated milk
2 14.75-ounce cans creamed corn, undrained
Salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce to taste
1/2-1 cup water
*If you’d like, make a double recipe of this homemade cream of chicken soup; omit the poultry seasoning and simmer it with 1/2 pound of diced red potatoes until the potatoes are tender.
Instructions:
In a large soup pot, melt the butter. Add the minced pepper and onion and sauté until tender and fragrant. Add the crawfish tails and stir to combine. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer (don’t boil–bad things will happen). Season to taste and serve. Makes about 12-14 servings.
Questions & Reviews
Any chance that this could be made in a crockpot? I was thinking of sautéing the onion and pepper and then place all ingredients in the crockpot. Has anyone tried this?
I’m almost positive you could, but I can’t say 100% without trying it first
Thank you for the recipe. I couldn’t find mine. This is exactly how I make crawfish bisque. So easy and delicious!
So this was posted ages ago, but I’m offering one small change I’d make for it to be more consistent with Cajun cooking. Add about three stalks of celery, also minced, when you cook the onion and bell pepper. Friends i have from Louisiana call it “the Trinity.”
I’m headed to HEB (the grocery store) for the ingredient, though I’ll probably only make half a batch.
Had crawfish corn chowder at a new restaurant on the gulf and it was delicious, so I searched for a recipe that seemed similar and this was it. I added a can of cream of mushroom soup and a block of cream cheese and everyone loves it
I fixed this for dinner today. It was awesome.
I love this recipe! I live in south Louisiana near New Orleans. This isn’t a bisque but it is a great soup! My Cajun husband loved it. A crawfish bisque is a dark gravy with the crawfish heads cooked in it and served over rice 🙂
I so misread …I see it days 4 lol
Just curious why I would need to make a double batch of the homemade cream of soup if the recipe is equiv. To 2 cans ? The bisque only calls for 2 cans.
After seeing this recipe, I decided to give it a try. And let me tell you, my family LOVES it!! We have 7 kids (yes, you read that right!) and every one of them enjoys this meal. I usually double the recipe and freeze the leftovers, and it freezes well, and tastes great when reheated. Thanks for the awesome recipe!!
We made this for dinner a couple of weeks ago and it is so amazingly delicious! My husband said it was at the top of his favorite soups list along with Sara’s white chicken chili. I have to agree with him. Love you guys!
I absolutely adore seafood (which is sad that I live in land-locked Utah). I don’t think I’ve ever seen crawfish available in the store. There are frozen lobster tails that go on sale several times a year so we typically like to make my Lobster Bisque (http://onlysoups.blogspot.com/2012/12/lobster-bisque.html). Which is a little more time consuming, so maybe I’ll have to try your version next time I don’t have a couple hours to make it.
I can cook and eat most anything, but crawfish give me the creeps! There’s a local crawfish festival here, and I’d love to go sometime, but haven’t been able to work myself up to it. 🙂 I might consider doing this with the frozen crawfish, though. It might be a good way to dip my toe in, so to speak. Thanks for the recipe!
I have tons of canned corn–can I use that in place of creamed corn or is the creamed corn necessary? This looks sooooo good!
The creamed corn kind of adds to the luscious texture (and this is coming from a girl who kind of finds creamed corn gaggy), so I’d recommend using it, but it’s totally your call! 🙂
You can puree regular corn and it will give you almost the same texture. Just make sure to just puree part of it and not all, so that you you have whole corn also.
Yesterday was grocery shopping day and I was so stoked to get the ingredients for this. Until I priced crawfish. The frozen shelled stuff was $13.99/lb (one package). That is not in my budget!
The seafood case and frozen section both had whole crawfish, eyes and all. But that is not going to happen for me. I’m a weenie. I can barely stand to peel already-prepped shrimp. :-O They were pretty cost-prohibitive too, escpecially when you consider how much you would have to buy to get a pound and a half of meat.
I live in GA and do not have access to a fish market, farmers market, etc. Just grocery stores, Walmart, and Target, and not very big ones at that. Anybody have suggestions for sourcing crawfish? There is a Trader Joe’s and Aldi in the city where I work.
Lent is coming up soon, and in my area, there’s usually a lot of seafood sales around Lent. Maybe if you watch the ads you could get a good deal on shrimp. And Aldi has pretty good prices too- maybe shrimp would be reasonable there (sorry, don’t have any ideas for crawfish).
This is a family favorite! Funny thing the first time I made crawfish corn soup, I was a newlywed, hosting Christmas for the first time. Decided to use Emerils recipe. Not a good choice. It was delicious but I cooked all day. This recipe same great taste, Nome of the work!
oh yum!!! i served my mission in Louisiana and LOVE the food, people and area! I LOVE crawfish anything! Thanks for sharing!
Looks delicious! I definitely have to try this. We lived in New Orleans for four years, so I’m excited to have another New Orleans recipe. I hope i can find crawfish in Texas.
Also, Jeni was in my ward, such a small world!
I’m not much for seafood either but when it saw this recipe it totally made me think of this sketch.
http://youtu.be/A2KCGQhVRTE
Ha ha ha! That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this recipe too! Love it!
My sister just got called to the baton rouge mission! As my contribution I’m gonna have to start prepping her palate with your Louisiana menu items. Self-assigned challenge.. accepted.
Oh, YAY!!! She’s going to love it. Sara’s brother actually served here. Crazy, right?! Anyway, if she’s ever in Pineville, that’s where I am! We love all the missionaries, but we really love the sisters. And Elder Rennie (just in case his mom is reading…but seriously, we really really love Elder Rennie. 🙂 )
AWESOME!!! She will LOVE it. That’s where I served. If she has facebook. there’s a GLBRM page and she can ask all us “old-timers’ any question she has! Tell her she is going to the BEST mission on Earth!
Thanks for keeping it real! I don’t want to use canned soup all the time, but it still beats fast food. And while some folks may have nothing else to do all day every day but cook, most of us need help sometimes. I have a killer chocolate cake recipe that takes a cake mix and a package of chocolate pudding that is waaaay better than any cake I have ever tried to make from scratch. It takes 5 minutes to whip up. Go figure. Anyway the soup looks deelish and I’m trying it (with the canned soup).
This looks wonderful. Were the crawfish tails cooked before you added them or did you add them raw?
They were cooked. Thank goodness, haha. I don’t think I could have handled it otherwise. 🙂
Cream of anything soups are A -ok with me! I think I will half this recipe to give it a try for our small family.
I am on board with the canned soups, so no worries here! I may die early because of it, but I guarantee I would die sooner from a loss of sanity if I was making homemade cream of X soups every time I needed them. 🙂
My Costco in Oregon has langostino in the “fresh” frozen seafood display, I bet those would work too.
My Utah family would love this soup BTW my 11-year old daughter thinks she wants to go on a mission to New Orleans although she’s never been there and only seen Princess and The Frog 🙂 on the hunt for crawfish now … Thanks for sharing!!
Sounds so Yummy! We can find craw fish in the stream behind my house, but I don’t think their big enough to harvest! 🙂 Are the ones you have pictured here from the frozen section? Or did you get them from your meat counter? I live in Atlanta and I think they sell them at the meat counter. Just wondering what you did.
I just got mine from the freezer case. During crawfish season, I can get them at fish markets and stuff, but not right now. 🙁
Holy crap, that is a lot of cans LOL! Looks delish, though. I may give this a shot, but wow…lots of cans. 🙂