Crawfish Monica

My mother-in-law has taught me how to make so many delicious recipes using crawfish tails, and when she sent us home one weekend with some leftovers from a crawfish boil, I knew we had to make a batch of Crawfish Monica to share the recipe.

If you ever have the opportunity to visit New Orleans, I highly recommend that you go during French Quarter Fest so that you can try small portions of all of the wonderful food that New Orleans has to offer.

🥘 Ingredients Needed

• Rotini Pasta – Rotini Pasta is easier for festival-goers to eat, but when we make this at home, we actually really like to eat this dish with linguine or fettuccine – the creamy sauce coats the long noodles really well.
• Butter
• Onions – I like to use yellow onions or sweet onions to make this dish. Often times I just use whatever I have at home.
• Fresh Garlic – Dice up fresh cloves of garlic to add the most flavor.
• Cajun Seasoning – We like to use this recipe to make homemade Cajun Seasoning. It is also referred to as Bayou Blast or Essence. If you don’t want to make Cajun Seasoning, you can use Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning.
• Kosher Salt
• Cayenne Pepper
• Dry White Wine – You don’t have to go out and get a special wine for this. Sometimes when cooking with wine, I use whatever I have that is already open. I happened to have a bottle of Pinot Grigio in the fridge that we didn’t really like. The perfect excuse to use it up!
• Heavy Cream
• Fresh Lemon Juice
• Crawfish Tails – You can use a package of crawfish tails from the grocery store or use leftover crawfish tails from a crawfish boil. Packaged crawfish tails are Crawfish Tails – You can use a package of crawfish tails from the grocery store or use leftover crawfish tails from a crawfish boil. Packaged crawfish tails are usually sold in a 12 or 16-ounce package. You will need a pound of crawfish tails. Try to look for Louisiana Crawfish (they will likely be farmed), but you don’t want farmed crawfish from China. If you look at pictures of this dish from Jazz Fest, you’ll notice that the sauce has more of an orange color – your sauce might not end up this color. It depends on how fatty your crawfish are, where they are from, and if they are fresh or frozen when you cook the pasta. (We’ve made this dish using leftover crawfish tails from a boil, and the sauce was a pretty pale color because the crawfish were cleaned off pretty well. When we used crawfish that were frozen in all of their fat and juices, the sauce was a vibrant orange color.)
• Green Onions – Use a fresh bunch of green onions, which is about 1/2 cup chopped up.
• Fresh Parsley
• Grated Parmesan Cheese

Serve with lots of French bread, extra parmesan cheese, green onions, and fresh parsley.

🥣 How to Make Crawfish Pasta

Bring a large pot of really salted water to a boil and cook the pasta according to the package directions, removing it from the water when it is al dente – which means it still has a little bit of chew to it. It will cook a little bit more when it is mixed into the hot sauce. (I start boiling the water while dicing the onions and getting everything together. I found that the pasta cooks in a similar amount of time as it takes to make the sauce – in about 10 minutes.)

Save a big cup of the pasta water – at least 1/2 cup, more if you can. (If the pasta is done a long time before the sauce is ready, you can toss the pasta with a drizzle of olive oil to prevent the pasta from sticking together.)

How to Make Crawfish Monica Sauce

In a large skillet, melt butter over medium heat, then add the onions. (Pictures 1 – 2) Cook until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. (Picture 3)

To the softened onions, add the minced garlic, Cajun seasoning (also known as Bayou Blast), cayenne pepper, and salt. Cook until the garlic is fragrant and the onions are orange from the Cajun seasoning, 1 – 2 minutes. It will smell really good.

“Deglaze” the pan with the white wine and cook until the onions have absorbed most of the wine and the alcohol has evaporated. (Pictures 6 – 8)

Next, add the lemon juice and heavy cream and reduce the heat to medium-low heat. (Pictures 9 – 10) (Around this time, you’ll drain the pasta – remember to save some pasta water! Picture 11)

Cook this until the cream reduces a bit. When you can run your spoon across the bottom of the pan, and the sauce doesn’t immediately run back across, it is ready. (Picture 12)

Now add the cooked pasta, green onions, parsley, and crawfish, and mix well. (Picture 13 – 14) Cook until the crawfish is heated through, about 2 minutes, then add half of the cheese and stir until the cheese is melted. (Picture 15)

The sauce will look great, but you will want to add some of the reserved pasta water. Slowly pour in the cooking liquid until the sauce is luscious and creamy. Start with half a cup; you might need a whole cup – you might not – but you can’t take it out, so add it a little at a time.

This will make a huge difference in making sure the pasta is fully coated in the luscious sauce. Stir until the water combines with the sauce, then turn off the heat.

Toss the pasta in the sauce to fully coat it a few more times, then serve topped with the remaining parmesan and more fresh herbs if desired. 

🍱 Recipe Yield

This recipe will feed 8 – 10 people, or in our case, it feeds two people, 4 or 5 times.

Substitutions and Variations

• I mentioned this above, but when making Crawfish Monica at home, we often like to use linguine or fettuccine instead of rotini. We often use fresh pasta – I love to make sourdough pasta, and the tang from the sourdough pasta combined with the creamy sauce is so good!
• If you don’t have access to crawfish, you can make this with shrimp. Coat the shrimp in cajun seasoning and pan-fry them in 2 tablespoons of butter before cooking the onions. Remove them from the butter and set them off to the side, then follow the recipe as directed, adding the 6 tablespoons of butter for the recipe directly to the leftover shrimp butter in the pan. It will flavor the sauce. Add the cooked shrimp when you would add the crawfish in the recipe to warm back up – yum! 
• If you don’t have a full pound of crawfish (sometimes you won’t if you’re using leftovers from a crawfish boil), you can add shrimp, lump crabmeat, or use tasso. Dice the tasso, then sear it to get it nice and hot and crispy on the outside. Toss it with the pasta, and it will add a little spice and a lot of flavor to the sauce. (Crabmeat is delicious, but I understand if you look at the price of it right now and gasp!) Shrimp and crawfish pasta is delicious!

🙋‍♀️ Frequently Asked Questions

How to Store Leftovers

Store leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. Reheat with a little bit of extra heavy cream to bring the sauce back to life, and top with more cheese.

✏️ Helpful Tips

• This is a great recipe for using up leftover crawfish from a crawfish boil. Don’t rinse the crawfish tails after they are peeled – keep the fat and flavor on them.
• Add extra heavy cream when reheating Crawfish Monica. It will rejuvenate the sauce and keep the pasta from drying out.
• If you don’t have a lot of crawfish, add shrimp or diced tasso to the pasta – yum!

What to Serve with Crawfish Monica

Honestly, Crawfish Monica is a meal in itself, but you could serve it with a side of French bread, a cold beer, and a side salad. You can find more side dish ideas here.

Looking for More Leftover Crawfish Recipes

There’s always a strange amount of crawfish left over after a crawfish boil. Not quite enough for a huge meal, but always too much to finish at the boil without feeling totally stuffed. We like to peel the crawfish tails and use them to make some delicious dinners. Here are some of our favorite leftover crawfish dishes:

• Crawfish Étouffée
• Catfish Atchafalaya – While the title says catfish, Catfish Atchafalaya is fried catfish that is smothered in crawfish étouffée. It is absolutely delicious.
• Crawfish Bisque