If you live in Louisiana, you have to love crawfish. It’s a state law. At least I think it is. If it’s not, it should be.

Besides eating them right out of the shell on the tailgate of a pickup truck, there are a lot of ways to eat crawfish. You can put them in a baked potato, gumbo, etouffe, casserole, omelet, or this recipe – crawfish-rice dressing. It’s a very simple recipe – all you have to do is mix up all the ingredients and pour into a casserole dish and bake. Here’s what you’ll need:

• 1 lb frozen crawfish tails (with fat/juice), thawed
• 1 1/2 cups uncooked long-grain rice
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 can cream of onion soup (my store was out, so I substituted 1/2 can French onion soup and 1/2 can cream of celery soup and it turned out great)
• 1 chopped bell pepper
• 4 tbs butter, melted
• 2 tsp Tony’s seasoning
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 2 dashes hot sauce (or more if you like it spicy)

Just mix all ingredients in a large bowl…

… and pour into a greased 13×9 baking dish. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Taste the rice when it’s done – if it’s still a little crunchy, put back in oven for another 10 minutes, or until rice is tender. That’s it! Super easy!

This is perfect as a main dish, but it can also be served as a side dish if you’d like. It tastes like you’ve slaved away in the kitchen for hours, and no one has to know that you were really watching old episodes of Grey’s Anatomy while it baked.

Thanks y’all!

   – Nikki