Low Crawfish Prices Leave Plenty On The Table For This Leftover Crawfish Etouffee Recipe

For many in Louisiana, Easter Sunday is the height of crawfish season. With mild spring weather making it ideal for cooking outdoors, nothing captures the spirit of the day as well as a large boiling pot over a propane burner and a table covered with a massive pile of bright red crawfish in the backyard.

Eating boiled crawfish is an acquired but indulgent taste, full of subtleties that are slowly revealed to anyone patient enough to peel their shells by hand for hours. With a little skill and experience, a single person might easily peel through five pounds of crawfish in one meal.

In recent years, though, the price of that pile of crawfish has been on a rollercoaster. After drought and extreme temperatures caused devastation for crawfish farmers in 2024, boiled crawfish prices were reported to reach nearly $19 per pound in some locations, three or four times the average price. This year, Easter weekend delivered a welcome surprise at seafood markets, with prices dropping to their lowest of the season, roughly $3 per pound for sacks of live crawfish.

The stock market swings of the price of crawfish has led to some innovative ways for keeping track of the cost. Local television station WBRZ in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, updates a “Crawfish Price Index” every week with prices from dozens of markets and restaurants around the state. In 2017, Ryan and Laney King co-founded The Crawfish App, which includes an interactive map of availability, size, and price. It has been downloaded more than 500,000 times.

(MORE: Sweeten Your Easter With This Yummy Carrot Cake)

The current low price is the result of favorable weather for crawfish farmers. Crawfish are freshwater crustaceans and need deep, wet soil to breed and grow in the flooded rice fields where they are farmed. This February, a crucial month for crawfish, was the wettest February for the state of Louisiana since 2020. That has been a dramatic recovery from the year prior, when record-breaking heat and drought dried out and decimated crawfish populations across the state. By some estimates, farmers only harvested 5 percent of an average year’s production in 2024.

With prices so low, there will be plenty of leftover boiled crawfish tails to eat all week. The best reason to make crawfish etouffee is to make use of all of those succulent leftovers. Crawfish etouffee has a long, complicated history, though it is often said to have been first served at the Hebert Hotel in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, in the 1920s.

The recipe I use is a simple one, drawn from old community cookbooks and my mother’s advice. Unlike the boiling and peeling of crawfish, which is an all day event, crawfish etouffee should come together quickly, taking not much longer to make than the rice that it is served over.

(MORE: April Showers Tea: Cozy Springtime Brews For Rainy Days)

Ingredients for Crawfish Etoufee

2 yellow onions, minced

1 stalk celery, minced

2 green peppers, minced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 stick butter

¼ fat reserved from crawfish heads

2 lbs crawfish tails, boiled and peeled

1 cup seafood stock (preferably made from peeled crawfish shells)

Salt and pepper to taste

Green onions for garnish

Instructions

Melt butter over medium-low heat in a heavy bottomed pan. Gently saute onions, celery, green peppers, and garlic until softened and just beginning to brown. Add flour and stir together quickly for one minute.

Add crawfish fat and tails, carefully seasoning with salt and pepper, as there will already be plenty of seasoning from the crawfish boil. Pour in seafood stock and reduce at a simmer until you’ve reached your desired thickness. Etouffee should be saucy and smothering the crawfish, not too thick or thin.

Garnish with thinly sliced green onions and serve over rice.

Weather.com copy writer Wyatt Williams is exploring the relationship between weather, food, agriculture, and the natural world.

MORE ON WEATHER.COM

- Think Spring With This Pasta Primavera

- Feeling Spicy? Make This Thai Chili Oil

- Refreshing Spring Sips