The Ultimate After-the-Boil Soup Recipe to Try After Your Next Crawfish Boil
A few years ago, I rounded up a few of my favorite recipes for using up crawfish boil leftovers in this post. Well, it’s another crawfish season and I have another REALLY good way to put that spicy deliciousness to good use (and free your fridge from a bunch of leaky Ziploc bags!).
There are several versions of “after boil” soups out there, but they’ve left me wanting. Some involve making a roux (a step I don’t particularly want to make time for on what is usually a Monday evening after a weekend boil) and some have more of a stew-type texture and that’s not really my jam.
My jam is more on the baked potato soup side (because if you know me, you know that potatoes are my carb of choice). So it was only natural that I aimed to make an after the boil soup along those lines. I use an immersion blender in my soup pot to get the texture I want, but feel free to (carefully!) use a regular blender. If you decide to skip blending altogether, be sure to finely chop your veggies instead of the rough chop called for in the recipe.
The other thing that I wanted to do was use up those flavorful leftover boiled onions. In the past, we threw them in the trash as we were peeling the crawfish, but I recently pureed a boil’s worth of leftover onions to add to our crawfish étouffée and HAVE MERCY was it good! So I knew those onions would be making an appearance in this soup.
Since leftovers vary from boil to boil, the amounts are approximate. Feel free to play around with what you’ve got!
I did NOT add leftover crawfish to this batch of soup because I used them in another test recipe for crawfish egg rolls (which are seriously YUMMY!), but you can absolutely add them. Leftover mushrooms? I planned to add those too, but we accidentally ate them all! If you need something like garlic or onions and have none leftover, just use fresh or frozen. Get creative and make it your own!
After the Boil Soup
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons butter, divided in half
- Leftover crawfish boil sausage, diced — I used about 1/2 pound
- Leftover crawfish boil garlic — I used 2 heads/bulbs and just squeezed out the cloves
- Leftover crawfish boil onions, roughly chopped — I used about 1 cup
- Leftover crawfish boil potatoes, peeled (if desired) and cubed — I used about
- 10 potatoes (about 1 1/4 pounds)
- Leftover crawfish boil corn, cut from the cob — I used about 2 cups (6 little cobs)
- 3 cups chicken broth, divided
- 1/2 to 1 teaspoon liquid crab boil, if desired
- Salt, pepper & Tony’s to taste
- 1-1/2 cups heavy cream OR half & half OR milk
- OPTIONAL: crawfish tails, mushrooms, any other leftover boiled goodies you want
Directions
In a Dutch oven, heat 1 1/2 tablespoons butter over medium heat and add in your diced sausage. I like to do this to lightly brown the sausage, but feel free to skip this step. Remove from the pot with a slotted spoon and set aside.
In the same Dutch oven, add the rest of the butter, the onions, and the garlic cloves. Sauté for a moment and then add 1/2 to 1 tablespoon Tony’s. Add your cubed potatoes and 2 1/2 cups of the chicken broth. If desired, add in 1/2 to 1 teaspoon liquid crab boil. Give it a good stir, bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat. Simmer for 15 minutes. IMPORTANT: We will blend all of this in the next step, so don’t add in anything you want to keep whole (like your corn, crawfish tails, etc.).
If using an immersion blender: After 15 minutes, stir the potato mixture (it’s normal for it to stick a bit) and add your heavy cream. Use the immersion blender to puree any chunks of veggies.
If using a regular countertop blender: After 15 minutes, stir the potato mixture (it’s normal for it to stick a bit). Transfer contents to blender jar and add your heavy cream. Puree any chunks of veggies. Pour back into pot.
Add your corn and browned sausage (and crawfish tails, mushrooms, various boil leftovers!) to the pot and stir until uniform. Add remaining chicken broth a little at a time if needed to thin the soup to your desired consistency. Season to taste with salt, pepper & Tony’s. Simmer another 10 minutes.
Enjoy!
