Crab Stew for supper

With chicken butchering day quickly approaching, I took a peek in the freezer to try to see what we can eat or consolidate to the other freezer to make room for 47 cut up chickens soon to be occupying that freezer space.  I happened to see two gallon freezer bags of crabs in there.  Hmmmm...  The crabs were leftover from a crab boil after our crabbing trip that I posted about back in September.  If you weren't following us back then, you can catch up here:

http://ourmakersacresfamilyfarm.blogspot.com/2012/09/crabs-in-bucket.html

After looking at the bags of crabs, the boys and I decided to make a crab stew.  I got the recipe from here: CookingLouisiana.com Crab Stew Recipe I looked over the list of ingredients and we had a lot of it fresh in the garden or items that we had on hand.  Here is a list of the ingredients we'll use:

• 6 Whole Crabs  (caught back in September in Johnson Bayou, Louisiana)
• 1 1/2  cups chopped onion
• 1 cup chopped bell pepper (a mix of green and chocolate bell peppers from the garden)
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 3/4 cup chopped green onions (fresh from the garden)
• 1/3 cup chopped parsley (fresh from the garden)
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (homemade from our criolla sella peppers)
• 1 tsp chopped garlic
• 1/2 tsp creole seasoning
• 5 drops liquid crab boil
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 slices of lemon
• salt and pepper

Let's get started.  First we prepped all of the vegetables, chopping them into the quantities that the recipe called for.  Below I have the onions done and I'm working on the bell peppers.


Chopping vegetables

Now we have everything prepped and ready.  If you're looking at the cutting board below like a clock, I'll explain the ingredients.  Starting at 12 o'clock we have a cup of chopped bell pepper.  I used both green and chocolate bell peppers.  At 1 o'clock I have a cup and a half of yellow onion.  At 5 o'clock I have two big slices of lemons that were grown locally by a co-worker friend of mine.  At 6, I have chopped 1/3 cup of fragrant parsley.  At 9 we have 3/4 cups of green onions.  At 11, a cup of diced up celery.  Finally, at 11:30 a teaspoon (okay, maybe a tad more) of chopped garlic.


Prepped ingredients

The recipe calls for 6 whole crabs, but I'm putting a few more.  We'll eat them all - trust me.

Boiled crabs that we had frozen to use at a later date

And finally, before we start turning up the heat, we have the spices: Kosher salt and coarse black pepper, liquid crab boil, bay leaves, Creole Seasoning and cayenne pepper.  Instead of the cayenne, we used some homemade criolla sella peppers that we had dried and ground into pepper.  It has a nice, hot, smoky taste.

Spice it up

As almost any Cajun recipe begins... "First you make a roux."  To do this add a 1/4 cup of flour to 1/8 cup of butter in a stock pot, turn up the heat and stir, and stir and stir.


Making the roux

After stirring constantly, your roux will turn a nice chocolate brown...


Almost there...  (be patient)

Now add all of your chopped onions and saute for 10 minutes.


Saute the onions in your roux and keep stirring

 Then go ahead and add your garlic, celery and bell peppers and saute for another 15 minutes while stirring.  The aroma is quite nice in the kitchen right now!  This is sometimes called the holy trinity of Cajun cooking.

Adding the rest of the vegetables.

Increase the heat and slowly add water until it reaches a 'stew-like' consistency while bringing it to a boil.

Adding water

This looks about like the consistency we're shooting for.  Kinda hard to see through the steam, though.


The stew is beginning to take shape

Now we'll add the kosher salt, black pepper, Creole seasoning, bay leaves, 5 or 6 drops of liquid crab boil, lemon juice and criolla sella ground pepper.

Adding the seasonings

Finally, you'll add the crabs by just adding them to the pot and stirring them in, cooking for 15 - 25 minutes.  The aroma in the kitchen has intensified, you might say. 


Looking good!

Now turn your heat low and add in your chopped green onions and parsley to the pot and stir it all up.  Cover the pot and simmer for 10 minutes or so, while you put a pot of rice on and get the plates ready and milk poured.

Oh yeah!

Now is the time to load up a plate, say grace, and enjoy a supper of crab stew.  Man, was it good!  Don't forget to get a plate to put in the middle of the table to put all the crab shells in.  This is not really a dish to eat while maintaining good etiquette.  The boys and I wolfed this down and lined up by the pot for seconds.  (The only negative was I steamed some fresh broccoli from the garden as a side and forgot about it and overcooked it.  Oh well, it was still good, but the colors weren't as vibrant green as I like.)

A nice plate of deliciousness!

Just as we were finishing up the crab stew, a cinnamony smell wafted across the kitchen and drew us to the oven where Russ had baked an Apple Crisp dessert for us to partake of.


Apple Crisp Dessert

Now all I need is a nap!