Tag: Louisiana Seafood

Spice Up Your Seafood Game with This Charbroiled Oyster Recipe

Today, we’re diving into the world of Charbroiled Oysters, as per this delicious recipe from Louisiana Cookin. This uncomplicated charbroiled oyster recipe brings together the richness of fresh oysters, the smokiness of paprika, and the zesty kick of Creole seasoning. Perfect for any occasion, let’s explore the details of crafting this flavorful treat.

Ingredients for Charbroiled Oyster Recipe:

Directions for Charbroiled Oyster Recipe:

  1. Begin by melting the unsalted butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir occasionally until the butter turns a golden brown and develops a toasty aroma, which should take approximately 3 to 5 minutes.
  2. Remove the saucepan from heat, then add in the minced garlic, hot sauce, smoked paprika, Creole seasoning, and lemon zest to create a flavorful butter mixture. Set aside.
  3. Preheat your oven’s broiler and position the rack in the center. Take a 12-inch cast-iron skillet and fill it halfway with food-grade rock salt. This not only enhances the presentation but also ensures even cooking. Arrange thefresh oysters on the half shell atop the rock salt.
  4. Spoon the prepared browned butter mixture generously over each oyster, ensuring they are well-coated with the flavorful blend. Slide the skillet under the broiler and let the magic happen. In just 3 to 5 minutes, the butter mixture will become irresistibly bubbly, enhancing the natural taste of the oysters.
  5. Once done, serve these charbroiled delights with slices of crusty French bread and lemon wedges. The addition of fresh parsley provides a vibrant and herbal touch, completing the dish.

Side Dish Suggestions:

To complement the robust flavors of your charbroiled oysters, consider pairing them with some delightful side dishes. A crisp green salad with a tangy vinaigrette, roasted vegetables drizzled with balsamic glaze, or even a light coleslaw would make excellent choices. These sides not only add variety to your meal but also balance the richness of the oysters.

Zesty Green Salad: Introduce a refreshing element to your meal with a crisp green salad. Combine a mix of arugula, spinach, and watercress for a vibrant base. Toss in cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced radishes, and cucumber ribbons for added crunch. Drizzle with a zesty vinaigrette made from olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, and a hint of honey.

Roasted Vegetables with Balsamic Glaze: Elevate your charbroiled oysters with a side of caramelized and roasted vegetables. Choose a medley of seasonal vegetables such as cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, and asparagus. Roast them in the oven until they develop a golden brown color, then finish with a drizzle of balsamic glaze for a sweet and tangy touch.

Light and Tangy Coleslaw: Balance the richness of the oysters with a light and tangy coleslaw. Shred cabbage and carrots, and mix with a dressing made from mayonnaise, apple cider vinegar, a touch of sugar, and celery seeds. This crisp and flavorful coleslaw adds a delightful crunch to each bite.

Garlic Herb Roasted Potatoes: Create a comforting side dish with garlic herb roasted potatoes. Cube potatoes and toss them in a blend of olive oil, minced garlic, fresh herbs like rosemary and thyme, salt, and pepper. Roast until golden and crispy on the outside, offering a satisfying contrast to the tender oysters.

Quinoa Salad with Citrus Dressing: Embrace a healthier option with a quinoa salad featuring bright citrus flavors. Cook quinoa and let it cool before mixing with segments of orange or grapefruit, diced avocado, and chopped fresh herbs like mint and cilantro. Drizzle with a citrus dressing for a burst of freshness.

In conclusion, charbroiled oysters offer a tantalizing blend of flavors that will elevate your dining experience. This recipe brings together simple ingredients to create a dish that is both impressive and satisfying. Whether you’re hosting a dinner party or craving a special treat, these charbroiled oysters are sure to leave a lasting impression.

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Step into Cajun Cuisine with a Delicious Shrimp Boil

If you’re looking to bring a taste of Louisiana to your dining table, this Cajun Shrimp Boil recipe from Louisiana Cookin is just what you need. Bursting with bold flavors and succulent shrimp, this dish is a true Cajun delight. The best part? You can personalize it by adding your favorite ingredients alongside the shrimp, so get ready to embark on a culinary adventure!

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Preheat your oven to 375°F.
  2. Trim about half an inch off the top end of each garlic bulb, ensuring the cloves remain intact. Place the garlic bulbs, cut side up, on a sheet of aluminum foil. Drizzle them with olive oil, then tightly wrap the foil around them.
  3. Pop the garlic package into the preheated oven and let it roast until the cloves turn soft and golden, which should take around one hour. The aroma will fill your kitchen, making it hard to resist the anticipation of the flavorful shrimp boil to come.
  4. Time to prepare the stockpot for the boil! Fill a large stockpot with 12 quarts of water. Now, add the concentrated shrimp and crab boil, along with the crawfish, shrimp, and crab boil bag. Squeeze the juice from the halved lemons into the pot, then toss in the lemon halves themselves. Include the bay leaves and black peppercorns as well. Give everything a good stir to distribute the flavors evenly.
  5. Cover the stockpot and crank up the heat until the water reaches a rolling boil. Maintain this vigorous boil for about 30 minutes to allow the spices to infuse the liquid.
  6. Time to add the roasted garlic, celery, and onions to the pot. Once they’re in, let the boil resume its lively bubbling for another 5 minutes. This will allow the flavors to meld together and create a savory base.
  7. Carefully introduce the unpeeled fresh shrimp into the pot. Give it a gentle stir to ensure every shrimp is fully immersed in the flavorful broth. Cover the pot, turn off the heat, and let it sit for 10 minutes. This will allow the shrimp to cook gently in the residual heat, ensuring they remain plump and juicy.
  8. Now comes the exciting part—draining the shrimp boil. Remove the lid, carefully pour the contents of the pot into a colander, and bid farewell to the seasoning bag and bay leaves as they make their exit. Your aromatic Cajun shrimp, infused with the essence of garlic and spices, are now ready to be devoured.
  9. To serve your Cajun Shrimp Boil, provide lemon wedges, cocktail sauce, melted butter, rémoulade sauce, Cajun seasoning, and French bread on the side. These accompaniments will complement the flavors and add an extra layer of deliciousness to your meal. Don’t forget to garnish with fresh parsley for a vibrant finishing touch.

Side Dish Suggestions:

  • Corn on the cob: Boil some fresh corn on the cob alongside the shrimp for a classic Southern side dish. Serve it with a slather of butter and a sprinkle of Cajun seasoning.
  • Red potatoes: Boil small red potatoes until tender, then toss them in melted butter and sprinkle with chopped parsley. They make a delightful addition to the shrimp boil.
  • Hush puppies: Whip up a batch of golden, crispy hush puppies to accompany your Cajun feast. These cornmeal-based fritters are perfect for savoring the flavors of the shrimp boil.

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Cajun Grilled Herbed Red Snapper: A Delight for Seafood Lovers

If you find yourself tired of the same old fish dishes and are looking for something new and exciting to tantalize your taste buds, then look no further than this Cajun Grilled Herbed Fish recipe from Louisiana Cookin. This delightful red snapper entree combines the natural freshness of fish with the aromatic blend of herbs, creating a tantalizing dish that will surely impress your family and friends. So, let’s dive into the details and learn how to prepare, cook, and serve this seafood delicacy.

Ingredients for Red Snapper 

Directions for cooking the Red Snapper

  1. You’ll want to start this dish by preparing a charcoal grill, creating a medium-hot fire, or if you prefer, you can preheat the grill to a medium-high temperature ranging from 350°F to 400°F.
  2. Make three diagonal cuts on both sides of the fish, ensuring they are approximately 1½ inches apart. Fill each of these slits with a generous tablespoon of delicious Shrimp Butter. You’ll create the Shrimp Butter by taking a large dutch oven and heating vegetable oil over medium heat. You’ll then add shrimp shells and garlic and cook until the shells turn pink. At which point, add butter and zest and cook until the butter is melted and bubbly. Remove this from the heat and allow it to cool completely. Strain the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve and discard any solids. Fill each of the slits on the fish with a generous tablespoon of your Shrimp Butter.
  3. Rub the fish with oil, and season skin and cavities with salt, pepper, and bourbon seasoning. Stuff the fish with oregano, dill, basil, thyme, and sections from lemon slices. Grill fish on one side until skin no longer sticks, 4 to 6 minutes. Using a metal spatula, carefully turn fish, and grill until cooked through, 4 to 6 minutes more. Transfer to a serving platter.
  4. Serve with lemon wedges and additional Shrimp Butter, and garnish with herbs, if desired. For instance, you can sprinkle a handful of freshly chopped parsley or cilantro over the fish for a vibrant pop of color and a burst of freshness.
  5. Enjoy!

Notes:

  • To ensure the best flavors and textures, it’s crucial to choose the right type of fish. Opt for firm-fleshed varieties such as redfish, catfish, trout, or snapper. Freshness is key, so purchase your fish from a reliable source. Look for clear, bright eyes, vibrant skin, and a mild sea-like aroma. Avoid any fish with a fishy smell or slimy texture.
  • Two Delicious side dishes: Cajun Corn Maque Choux: Sauté fresh corn, bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes in butter until tender. Season with Cajun spices, salt, and pepper. Creole Potato Salad: Boil diced potatoes until tender, then mix them with mayonnaise, Creole mustard, green onions, and parsley. Season with salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully prepared a delicious Cajun Grilled Herbed Fish that is bursting with flavors. The combination of herbs, spices, and perfectly grilled fish will transport your taste buds to the heart of Louisiana. Remember, the key is to select fresh fish, marinate it to perfection, and cook it just right on the grill. Enjoy this delightful meal with your loved ones, and let the flavors of Cajun cuisine transport you to the vibrant culinary world of Louisiana.

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Simple and Classic Seafood Boil Recipe

In South Louisiana, backyard crawfish or seafood boils are the types of events that you look forward to all year round. Whether it’s the communal eating tradition, methods by which you prepare or ingest the cuisine, or just the flavors of the boiled seafood and vegetables themselves, there’s always something to look forward to. Luckily this recipe for a Creole-Seasoned Seafood Boil from food blog Food52 with supplemental information from Everyday Creole is the perfect resource you need to keep the spirit of a successful Louisiana Seafood Boil alive and well.

 Before beginning the recipe, it should be duly noted that this is by no means a definitive list of ingredients or cooking practices. As anyone who’s ever been at the helm of a boiling stockpot knows, every Louisiana chef and cook has their own method to their particular culinary madness. That being said, the tried-and-true phrase of “fresh is best” should apply in this recipe, as it often does. When procuring seafood, sausages, and vegetables, it’s always a good practice to try and get the freshest, locally sourced ingredients available. This will not only elevate your final dish but also your Creole authenticity.

Ingredients:

Directions:

  1. You’ll start this recipe by filling your large stockpot to its halfway marker with water. Bring the water to a boil before proceeding.
  2. Once boiling, add in your beer, ¾ cup of Creole Seasoning, ¼ cup of smoked paprika, 1 ½ teaspoon of Concentrated Crawfish, Shrimp & Crab Boil, bay leaves, red potatoes, lemons, and your halved head of garlic. Stir in your ingredients, and bring the stockpot back up to a boil.
  3. In a nearby skillet or saucepan, brown your sausage quarters until they emit their oils and are properly slightly blackened on both sides. Then, add your sausage into the stockpot, stir together the ingredient mixture and sausage, and bring your heat down to medium. Simmer for at least 15 minutes or until your potatoes are slightly tender.  When they are, add in your corn, while continuing to cook for an additional 5 minutes.
  4. Add in your shrimp and crab to the stockpot at this point, and continue to cook it all until the seafood is fully cooked. While this happens, melt your butter into a saucepan over medium heat after you dispose of the sausage oil from earlier. Stir in your minced garlic into the nutter, and cook until the butter begins to caramelize. Stir in the brown sugar, lemon pepper seasoning, 2 tablespoons of Creole Seasoning, 1 tablespoon of smoked paprika, onion powder, and ½ teaspoon of Concentrated Crawfish, Shrimp & Crab Boil. Simmer this all on low until you’re ready to serve.
  5. When finished, drain the liquid from the stockpot and serve your seafood boil immediately. Feel free to drizzle the butter sauce atop your boil or use it as a complimentary dip.
  6. Enjoy!

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Chefs on Boats Program Brings together Fisherman and New Orleans Restaurateurs

For the past year, Louisiana seafood experts have had engaging conversations about the Louisiana coastline aboard fishing boats. These individuals who have an active stake in the sustainability of the Louisiana coast weren’t coastal scientists or researchers, but Instead, according to this article from Nola.com, they were chefs from famed New Orleans seafood restaurants meeting with the fishermen who stock their very kitchens. The program that regularly brings together Louisiana restaurant professionals with the fishermen who harvest their seafood is a New Orleans-based program called Chefs on Boats.

The planned meeting between fishermen and restaurateurs isn’t simply for the novelty of it, but it’s an opportunity and an actively growing effort to connect the two coast-concerned parties with the aim of building a collectively better understanding and making stronger allies as the Louisiana coast grapples with historical change.

Centered around a well-intentioned and simple goal to quite literally “get people on boats to see firsthand the work of fishermen and the challenges facing Louisiana’s coastal environment from land loss and climate change,” the Chefs on Boats project is aimed at bringing restaurant people of all types, such as line cooks, managers, bartenders, chefs, and owners straight to the source so that they can bring that experience and knowledge back with them to their French Quarter kitchens.

The Chefs on Boats project is representative of an evolution of a nonprofit effort that formed quickly in 2020 calledChef’s Brigade. The Chef’s Brigade nonprofit is a “united coalition of independent restaurants, purveyors, and chefs working together under a culinary brigade system to feed healthy and amazing food to the citizens, front line responders and healthcare workers of New Orleans on a daily basis.” Initially forming when the pandemic closed restaurants and imperiled hospitality businesses, the grassroots Chef’s Brigade group began to pay otherwise idled restaurants to cook for the pandemic’s essential workers such as first responders and health care workers.

By its conclusion, the program had supplied approximately 3.7 million meals to those in need, and Troy Gilbert, the co-founder of Chef’s Brigade had built a reliable network across the restaurant industry, causing him to think about bringing many seafood professionals together. Gilbert characterized this transition by saying, “we had 90 restaurants in the program that I was talking to once a week, and it blew my mind to discover the disconnect they had from the seafood industry. In New Orleans, we consider ourselves a maritime people, but we built all these barriers to the water around us and there’s a disconnect, including with chefs; it just made sense for us to do this.”

Dana Honn, the founder of the New Orleans-based tropical restaurant and bar Carmo, recently participated in an oyster harvesting outline along with Lindsay Allday and Jeff Spoo, both oyster sommeliers over at Sidecar Patio and Oyster Bar. Honn reflected on the experience by stating that the restaurant people who make their living through the seafood heritage of Louisiana essentially have a nonexistent relationship with the “people who make it tick.” Honn said, “it’s shocking how little information is provided to people in the culinary field and how much they want to learn. There’s a gap, and this (program) is a step in the right direction.”

Since beginning the project only last year, over a dozen trips have taken place, meaning approximately 60 restaurant professionals have been taken out to the source of their livelihood. Although the general design of Chefs on Boats is small in scale with each outing limited to only a half dozen occupants of partnered captain Richie Blink’s skiffs, the close quarters allow more one-on-one time between the restaurant workers and fishermen. Blink appropriately emphasized the importance of these outings by saying, “these waters, the seafood industry, the fishing families, it’s part of Louisiana culture that makes us who we are. It looks like it’s going away but there’s still that can-do spirit, and I think that will get us through these challenges.”

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2022 Crawfish Season Gears Up

Despite the annual challenges that Louisianians face, you can always expect them to remain loyal to the best season of all, crawfish season; and according to this business article from The Advocate, 2022 is looking to be no different in terms of excitement.

It might be accurate to say that Louisiana’s pride has been bruised over the past two years given the unexpectedly exhausting challenges that the pandemic and numerous devastating hurricanes have brought with them. But despite these challenges, Advocate staff writers report that restaurateurs, retailers, farmers, and consumers are as enthusiastic as ever to dive head-first into the 2022 crawfish season as a means to embrace tradition.

Citizens of the gulf coast can attest that a crawfish boil is a singular event that has the ability to bring many different people together towards a common goal, to enjoy a communal meal that is more of an activity than a solitary experience. All throughout the winter, as Louisianians begin to look forward to temperatures rising and venturing outside once again without the threat of wind chill, they begin to anticipate that late winter and early spring emergence of crawfish season more and more.

The enthusiasm this year is palpable, as November and December 2021 saw temperatures that were warmer than expected, which kept local crawfish active. Because the water temperatures in some ponds had reached 75 degrees, the crawfish were able to stay active longer than they had in previous years. This led to the crawfish spending the extra time feeding, gathering, and growing, which has only resulted in heightened catches in early January.

Mark Shirley, an aquaculture agent for the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center and Louisiana Sea Grantsaid of that optimal, extended period for crawfish activity, “when the water temperature is jumping between 60 and 70 degrees, that’s optimum for crawfish growth.”

Agricultural experts and industry professionals envision a bountiful crawfish harvest this year despite the prolonged January cold snap that has placed a dent in crawfish production. Laney King, a co-founder of The Crawfish App, software that tracks the prices of the southern delicacy statewide, said that the farmers and vendors she’s spoken to remain optimistic about crawfish production in 2022 despite the frigid January temperatures.

King said, “they can already see the growth that the crawfish have had, even if they’re kind of hiding out a little bit in this cold weather right now.” This statewide resilience is sure to be mirrored by the Louisiana consumer come the peak months of the season in March, April, and May.

As a crawfish specialist, Mark Shirley reported to The Advocate that crawfish supply should remain strong this season, and he’s already seen the production season begin to take shape as well. The sheer amount of land that has been devoted to crawfish production across the state has been measured at about 250,000 acres, and that number is still rising. It’s expected that nearly 150 million pounds of crawfish will be produced in these acres of crawfish ponds across Louisiana this season.

Shirley noted that there are market concerns to be aware of going into the season such as the possibility of a labor shortage when it comes to local crawfish processing plants struggling to find enough workers to assist with the peeling and packaging of crawfish for tail distribution.

However, Shirley advised that Louisiana consumers should plan to start their crawfish boils sooner rather than later in the season so that local farmers can reap the economic benefits and provide for a healthier season throughout the spring. He said, “don’t wait to eat crawfish until April or May. Don’t wait until Easter. Don’t wait until Mardi Gras. Start eating crawfish now. They’re available,” and as anyone who’s attended an early-season crawfish boil can tell you, many Louisianians don’t need to be told to jump on crawfish season early.

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