Leftover crayfish soup
I hate food waste! So I just love making dinner from leftovers. It's crayfish season here in Sweden and that means crayfish parties (kräftskivor) are happening left right and centre.
Crayfish leave a TON of waste. You mainly just eat the tails, which I reckon is about 10 percent of the crayfish! The shells, the heads and the claws are left. There isn't much you can do with the waste except make soup, so I thought I'd give it a go. I am a wuss and couldn't face boiling up the heads and all the little antennae so I just saved the claws.
I almost never succeed in getting the meat out of the claws anyway so now I feel better about not wasting that!
The crayfish bisque recipes I found online seemed inordinately complicated. 22 ingredients and 32 steps just seems unnecessary! I like my cooking to be simple. So I freestyled and the soup tasted amazing so I thought I'd share the recipe.
Ingredients:
Crayfish claws from a 4 person kräftskiva
1 red onion
1 carrot
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp butter
1 brown onion
1 clove garlic
2 small potatoes
2 sticks of celery
1 tsp tomato purée
100-150ml cream or oat cream
Directions:
1. Roughly chop the carrot and red onion and add it to a pan with the crayfish claws and the bay leaf (you can probably smash up the claws if you want this to go more quickly).
2. Cover with water and boil for an hour or two with the lid on to get all the flavour out of the claws.
3. Sieve out the claws, bayleaf and onions and return the carrot and broth to the pan. Simmer for another hour or two uncovered so that the broth reduces to about half the volume or less.
4. Finely chop the onion and celery and fry it in butter in a new pan.
5. When they start to brown, add the potato and garlic (also finely chopped) and stir for a couple of minutes.
6. Add the broth, the carrot and the tomato purée and cook with the lid on for about half an hour, until all the veg is soft.
7. Purée the soup and add the cream or oat cream.
8. Eat yummy crayfish soup!
Serves: 2 and a half (me, my husband and our three year old son).
