"Best Evah!" type recipes with errors, buy websites have no "comment" feature

Cooking Discussions
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Here’s a “best ever” recipe for shrimp etouffee.

It’s generally okay, but has a couple of problems. The most salient is that they call for 1/2 cup of flour, per 8 Tbs of butter, to make the roux. Okay, fine.

But later in the recipe it tells you to mix “the 1 cup of flour” with the butter to make the roux.

Well, which is it? Eight Tbs flour to 8 Tbs butter, or 16 Tbs flour to 8 Tbs butter?

At a guess, it’s likely that 16 Tbs flour (one cup, not 1/2 cup) is closer to correct. But this is a huge disparity, and they do not provide any way to comment on the recipe. Just to “rate it”, which gets 5 stars, apparently.

The other big question is whether one should rinse the shrimp after dry brining with the 2.5 teaspoons salt plus 0.5 teaspoons baking soda. I decided to briefly rinse and it was still fairly salty, but still quite good. This is indeed a good recipe, but if they permitted commenting then people could ask questions like I had above.

End rant.

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Strange that it isn’t a newly published post.

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Water and clam juice, canned tomatoes, Worcestershire, and Tabasco!? Not for me… as it seems an abomination of a real Etouffee recipe… but I get that it is a lot more site work to provide for user comments (accounts, spam, etc.). With that said, there are numerous links to the publisher’s social media accounts where you could ask any questions you may have. Whether they actually respond to you is of course whether they GAF.

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I dont have FB or IG or the like, but could prob email them.

I didn’t use the suggested clam juice as that wasn’t a flavor I wanted. I sauted then simmered the shrimp shells for the broth. Although I’ll say, after reading about a dozen recipes (including from NO restaurants), it seems most treat clam, shrimp, chicken, and seafood broths as interchangeable.

What’s wrong with canned tomatoes?


Edit - Oh, hey, Scott, if you’ve got a favorite for étouffée could you stick it on your blog, or link here?

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I use Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen recipe, which is deceptively simple. This book is one of my all time favs, and out of respect for his legacy I’m not comfortable publishing it verbatim on my site… besides, somebody has already done so.

I do what you did for the stock, but I also throw everything discarded from prep in there as well (onion ends, celery scraps, bell pepper core), along with some garlic. You can add clam juice if you want to, but only clam juice seems ho hum to me.

Nuthin’ wrong with canned tomatoes, just never used tomatoes in an Etouffee.

For me, the trickiest part of this is the roux. Paul uses oil in cast iron, brings it up to almost smokin’ temp and gradually adds the flour, constantly whisking. getting a dark red roux in just under 5 minutes. Methods with butter can mean burn’t butter, and lower temp methods can mean 15 minutes or more of stirring.

One last thing… The era of “Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen” was at a time where Paul used a LOT of butter. So much so that he became so heavy he could not stand up to cook. His later books cut back on it, and I can usually cut back on it in just about every recipe in this book with little to no ill effects (as the post linked above mentions).

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I would think that shell stock better than any clam juice. Good idear. Etouffee is heaven to me.

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Paul was one of my culinary heros. This was my first etouffee. Get the roux right get the etouffee right.

He lost a lot of weight over time. First time I blackened fish was a revelation. Love Paul Prudhomme. Him and Justin Wilson were my first taste of Louisianna.

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Back when I lived in So. Cal, there was an ‘Orleans’ restaurant that opened up on National Blvd in the 80’s. I am not sure what Paul’s affiliation with it was, but it was definitely his menu. Favs were:

Popcorn Shrimp
Jalapeno Cheese Rolls
Tasso & Oysters in Cream on Pasta
Blackened Redfish
Crawfish Étouffée
Pecan Sweet Potato Pie
So many more…

It was a frequent visit, and the reason I bought his book. Luckily, it seems that all of the items that were on their menu are in his book. My favs were the first three, and it took serious consideration to order anything else. I wish I could get fresh oysters these days.

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1:1 by volume is the usual roux making.
going for a dark roux, increase flour 1.25-1.5:1 - as the flour toasts, the fat swims to the top…

as for ‘the best . . .’ I would advise to ignore all of them. except for known sites (ATK and a few others…) those sites of the Top Ten /pots/pans/air fryers/{anything} are merely selling sites (Amazon links…) that simply copy paste the marketing hype from the manufacturer’s / other sites.

the best “really?” examples are Top Ten electrical appliances - waffle makers to crock pots to counter-top ovens to . . . . recommending model numbers that are exclusively 110v powered . . . “tested and rated and . . .” by Asian sites where 110v / 60 Hz is not the standard, only 220v / 50 Hz. sorry, but I call BS - especially as all the testing and review text is direct cut/paste from other selling sites.
they are primarily there to collect their Amazon commission.

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Thanks much!