Crawfish Stuffed Jalapenos

Leftover crawfish?  If you live in the south, it happens after nearly every boil, to the point that it’s almost part of the tradition—plunking down around the table with friends & family to peel all the little critters you couldn’t finish off.  There are plenty of options for what to do with leftover crawfish (like the Crawmlette or Crawchos), but what if you only have a little bit of meat to work with?  Here’s an option for you: mix with a little cheese, stuff inside of a jalapeno, and then wrap it in bacon.

Last week The Hubs & I took an extended Memorial Week trip down to Houston to visit his sister & her family.  As part of the trip, my nephew K asked if I would make crawfish for him, since he’d never tried one before.  Always happy to oblige a food request, I brought my 3-gallon pot & boil seasoning down with me. 

Since only K was really interested in trying the crawfish (my other nephew & nieces were iffy about the idea, and my sis-in-law doesn’t eat seafood), I decided to do a traditional shrimp/sausage boil, and then just pick up a few pounds of already cooked crawfish from the most popular local crawfish place (The Crawfish Shack in Crosby, TX…good stuff).

Our Feast!  Gulf shrimp, crawfish, pecan-smoked andouille, red potatoes & sweet corn. 

While we did as much damage as possible, at the end of the meal about a third of the crawfish were still left.  So I peeled the rest & brought the meat home with us.  There was only about a half cup of leftovers, so not enough to make much of an etoufee or bisque (or even Crawchos, really).  Thought about making some quesadillas, but then Primeaux suggested stuffed jalapenos.  Since we were grilling anyway, jalapenos won out.

 

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup crawfish tails/claw meat, chopped

1.5 tablespoons low fat cream cheese (try it with Creole cream cheese if you can find it!)

1/2 tsp boil seasoning or Cajun seasoning

1 green onion, diced

4 large or 8 small jalapenos, with caps removed and seeds scraped out

4 slices reduced sodium bacon

 

DIRECTIONS:

Mix the crawfish, cream cheese, seasoning & green onion in a small bowl until well combined.

Place in a sandwich bag (we reused the bag we brought the crawfish home in) and snip off a half-inch hole in one corner to create a piping bag.  Then pipe the crawfish mixture into the jalapenos. 

Use the end of the bacon strip to cover the open end, then wrap around the jalapeno & secure with a toothpick. (If you use small jalapenos you may be able to wrap them with only half a strip of bacon.)  Grill on the top rack for about 5 minutes on each side (or until the bacon is crispy), or in your oven on an aluminum covered cookie sheet at 400F.

Since we only made 4 stuffed jalapenos, we had some of the crawfish stuffing mix left over… stay tuned to see what we make with it!!!

Weekend Recipe: Part 2: Rice & Gravy from Pot Roast Leftovers

"Rice & gravy" is a staple dish in Louisiana homes, and refers to the basic "style" of the dish. Like so many Cajun dishes, this requires a modifier, as in, "what TYPE of rice & gravy?" which just mean what meat will be used. Sometimes it's a duck rice & gravy, there's beef rice & gravy, chicken rice & gravy...whatever's on-hand.

(Fun fact: I was not aware that there was more than one type of "spaghetti" until I moved to Louisiana. So when you tell a Cajun that you made spaghetti, they will ask "what kind?" This question refers to the type of meat you used. So a traditional meat sauce spaghetti would be "ground meat spaghetti", or there's shrimp spaghetti, chicken spaghetti, etc. But I'm getting off topic. ...and kinda craving spaghetti now.)

There are also traditionally two types of gravies down south--either brown or red. Red gravy is tomato-based, where brown gravy is usually made with the drippings from the meat.

Elsewhere in the world, this dish might be called smothered or stewed meat over rice. (But it probably tastes better in Louisiana...of course...I'm biased.)

So, since we have leftover pot roast, and delicious au jus from that roast, it's only fitting to make a nice quick rice & gravy!



How do we go about it? Couldn't be easier.

1. Take about 2 cups worth of au jus, roast & veggies (minus the potatoes--we don't need to double up on starches) & set aside.



2. Pour off the au jus into a measuring cup, then top it off with water until you have 1 cup of liquid.

3. Break out your trusty can of cajun gravy mix (if you don't have one, you need to. This stuff is fantastic on anything--mashed potatoes, steak (with some sauteed onions & mushrooms), and of course, rice & gravy--I mean...there's a recipe for it on the can.


4. In a saucepan, cook some rice--we like to use instant brown rice. Prepare as stated on the package.

5. In a large skillet, add the gravy mix and your 1 cup of water-au jus, and whisk thoroughly. Heat to boiling. The gravy will reduce down to a beautiful dark brown, like so, in a matter of about 4 minutes:


5. Add your pot roast leftovers to the gravy & heat over low.

6. Once your rice is nice & fluffy:


Serve the roast & gravy mix over rice, and DEVOUR.



Makes about 4 servings.

Nutrition facts:

Calories 347.5
Total Fat 12.3 g
Saturated Fat 4.6 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 0.1 g
Monounsaturated Fat 0.0 g
Cholesterol 55.0 mg
Sodium 489.7 mg
Potassium 204.8 mg
Total Carbohydrate 28.9 g
Dietary Fiber 2.6 g
Sugars 1.8 g
Protein 25.2 g
Vitamin A 91.3 %
Vitamin B-12 0.0 %
Vitamin B-6 5.3 %
Vitamin C 7.5 %
Vitamin D 0.0 %
Vitamin E 1.1 %
Calcium 3.8 %
Copper 7.4 %
Folate 3.6 %
Iron 14.6 %
Magnesium 9.3 %
Manganese 12.0 %
Niacin 8.9 %
Pantothenic Acid 1.3 %
Phosphorus 2.6 %
Riboflavin 2.0 %
Selenium 0.5 %
Thiamin 6.7 %
Zinc 5.2 %