Crawfish leftovers recipes: Transforming leftover crawfish into delicious meals

Discover delicious recipes for your leftover crawfish!

Etta's crawfish fried rice (Etta's Kitchen, Etta's Kitchen)

Looking for the perfect way to make something really yummy with your leftover crawfish? We’ve rounded up some recipes you can use to create a whole new meal.

Shakti Baum, executive chef with Etta’s Kitchen, came the Houston Life studio to show you a crawfish fried rice you can try at home.

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Etta’s Crawfish Fried Rice

(4 Servings)

Ingredients:

• 4 cups cooked rice (cold and leftover)

• 2 cups crawfish tails

• 1 tablespoon sesame oil

• 1 tablespoon canola oil

• 1 tablespoon garlic minced

• 1 tablespoon ginger minced

• 1 tablespoons gochujang paste

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

• 2 tablespoons mirin

• 2 tablespoons chopped green onion

Directions:

• Heat sesame oil and canola in wok or hot nonstick skillet.

• Add crawfish, garlic and ginger.

• Cook on high heat for 30 seconds.

• Add rice, toss to combine crawfish, garlic and ginger.

• Add gochujang, soy sauce, mirin, and chopped green onion.

• Toss to thoroughly combine until rice is evenly coated with all ingredients.

• Allow rice to continue cooking on medium high heat until rice is slightly crispy.

• Plate.

• Garnish with chopped green onion and sesame seeds.

PRO TIPS:

1. Use cold, day-old, cooked rice.

2. Allow rice to crisp in the skillet at the end for maximum flavor

3. Add ground pork sausage to kick it up a notch! If you do, add in the beginning with garlic and sesame oil, and cook thoroughly before adding crawfish.

Baum offers cooking classes, pop us and catering. If you would like to connect with here, click here.

SEE ALSO: KPRC 2′s Eat Like a Local Crawfish Fest on sale now! 🦐

With Brennan’s of Houston Crawfish Boil Potato Salad, you can utilize everything leftover from the crawfish boil, including peeled crawfish, potatoes and corn. Carl Walker, Brennan’s of Houston General Manager and Former Executive Chef, stopped by the Houston Life kitchen to show how to transform your leftovers into a tasty dish.

Brennan’s of Houston Crawfish Boil Potato Salad

Ingredients:

1 lb. or about 2 cups peeled crawfish tail meat

1 ½ lbs. new potatoes, boiled until tender or left over from your crawfish boil

8 oz. Andouille Sausage – 1/4″ sliced into quarter rounds

2 cobs corn, cooked and sliced off the cob

½ cup yellow onion, small diced

½ cup celery, small diced

1 head garlic, used from the boil, squeezed out and smashed

2 boiled eggs, small diced

2 green onions or chives, slice the tops thin to garnish

1 ½ cups Brennan’s Comeback Sauce (recipe below)

SEE ALSO: Craving crawfish? Chris Shepherd visits a Louisiana crawfish farm and then finds some of the best mudbugs in Houston

Method:

1. Peel crawfish tail meat leftover from your crawfish boil or use method below to cook store-bought crawfish tail meat.

2. Smash your leftover potatoes. Place them on an oiled sheet pan and roast in the oven until nice and brown in color. This helps dry out the potatoes. When they are about half roasted, add diced sausage and continue roasting the potatoes. Remove from oven, cool to close to room temperature, and place in a large bowl that you will use to assemble your potato salad.

3. Add the corn, onion, celery, garlic and eggs to the potatoes and sausage. Mix just to incorporate the ingredients.

4. Add in about 1 ½ cups of Comeback Sauce to the potato mixture (add more sauce if you like creamier potato salad). Season with salt and pepper and garnish with snipped chives or sliced green onion tops.

Chef Notes: If you haven’t done a crawfish boil and want to make the salad, fill a large pot with 3 quarts water and add 1 Tbsp salt, 3 Tbsp creole seasoning, 3 bay leaves, 1 lemon (cut in half), 1 head of fresh garlic (cut in half), 1 Tbsp Zatarain’s Liquid Crab Boil Season. Bring these ingredients to a boil and add potatoes, sausage, and corn. When the potatoes are tender, remove the potatoes, sausage, garlic and corn from the boil. Drain and let cool. Then, drop your crawfish tail meat into the crawfish boil liquid, bring to quick simmer and remove. I use this for a quick boil to make potato salad if didn’t have leftovers or hadn’t done a recent seafood boil. It’s not the recipe that I would use to boil live crawfish and crabs – that’s going to have much more of everything, especially seasoning!

Brennan’s of Houston Comeback Sauce

Ingredients:

2 cups mayonnaise (Dukes or Hellman’s)

4 Tbsp creole mustard

4 Tbsp Cajun Power Garlic Sauce or favorite garlic hot sauce

5 Tbsp cocktail sauce

2 tsp Lea & Perrins or other Worcestershire sauce

½ fresh squeezed lemon

2 Tbsp snipped chives or thinly sliced green onion tops

Salt and Pepper

Method:

Easy! Mix all the ingredients in bowl and use it as a sauce or dip.

For more about Brennan’s of Houston, visit their website.

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About the Authors

Holly joined the KPRC 2 digital team in March 2024, leveraging her eight years of expertise in blogging and digital content to share her passion for Houston. Outside of work, she enjoys exploring the city's vibrant scenes, all while balancing her roles as a wife and mother to two toddlers.

Beatriz is a producer for Houston life. She’s a dog mom who enjoys traveling and eating her way through new cities and cultures.

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