Throw your very own Mardi Gras party with this delicious and easy Crawfish Hand Pie Recipe. No plane tickets or beads required!
Crawfish pie is a classic pillar of Southern Louisiana cuisine. Many New Orleans natives make their family's crawfish pie recipe in a regular deep-dish pie pan.
For me, this savory pie full of veggies and Louisiana crawfish tails are the perfect filling for mini pies or turnovers. The filling is super-savory, a little spicy, and exactly the kind of thing one wants to carry around in their pocket.
Or your picnic basket. Yes, that seems more normal. Let's do a picnic basket.
What you'll need to make this recipe:
Before we get to the step by step directions, a few notes about the ingredients:
Seafood: the recipe calls for crawfish, but shrimp or langostinos are great substitutes!
Veggies: celery, onion and mixed bell peppers are the classic combination in Cajun cooking. But feel free to customize the veggie mix to your preferences. Just keep the measurements the same.
Full ingredient list and measurements included in the printable recipe card below
Step by step instructions:
1. Prep filling for empanada shells
Preheat oven to 375โ, then prepare the filling.ย Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add diced yellow onions, red and green pepper, celery and garlic, along with a pinch of sea salt. Sautรฉ until tender and fragrant, about 6-7 minutes.ย
Add the milk and crawfish tails and mix gently, giving the seafood a minute to heat through.
Add the seasoned breadcrumbs, green onions, parsley, Old Bay Seasoning, orange zest and the ground black, cayenne and white peppers.
Let the seasoned crawfish mixture heat through, then taste and add additional salt, pepper or Old Bay, as needed.
2. Fill hand pie
Spoon 2-3 tablespoons of crawfish pie filling into each store-bought empanada shell. Fold over and use a fork to crimp the edges closed.
Brush the top of the crust with the egg white Sprinkle with a little flaky salt.
3. Bake hand pies
Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, rotating the pan as needed to achieve a golden brown crust.ย After removing from the oven, let the pies sit for 5 minutes before serving.ย
4. Serve and enjoy
These pies are delicious when served with Spicy Aioli Sauce or a bottle of Louisiana hot sauce.
Hungry for more Cajun flavors?
FAQ's and Serving Suggestions:
I like to serve these pies as part of a larger buffet spread when entertaining, alongside other small bites like eggplant bruschetta, shrimp stuffed Hungarian wax peppers and spicy garlic hummus. For a lovely dinner entree, I pair the crawfish pies with a green salad like Mediterranean Tossed salad and homemade crawfish bisque with crawfish cakes.
I've seen crawfish pies with just a bottom crust, topped with the filling and baked until golden brown. I've also sampled crawfish pie with both a bottom and top crust, like your favorite giant pot pie. Both are great options here, but depending on the size of your pie dish, you may need to increase the filling recipe by 50 percent to have enough to top off a deep dish pan.
You can! Just follow the package instructions for baking the tart shells through completely.
Store bought pie crust dough or store bought pizza dough cut into circles (similar to this tuna empanada recipe) would both work. And if you're feeling fancy, homemade empanada dough or pie crust will do the trick, as well.
Green bell pepper, celery and yellow onions are considered the holy trinity of Louisiana cuisine, so I'm hesitant to give any alternate options here. These three really do create the very best flavor. If you're cooking for children or grown-ups who think they don't like these vegetables, it might be worth throwing them into the food processor and creating a vegetable paste to fold into the entire mixture. The flavors will be present, but the pesky textural challenges will be cured.
The cayenne is really the only source of heat in the recipe. The white and black pepper add a little spice, but not a notable heat. And the combination of peppers add a lovely round spice to the dish. So if you're looking for a very mild dish, reduce the cayenne to just a pinch, but I would implore you to keep all three peppers in to be sure you get the very best final product.
You sure can. I love the balancing flavor that this touch of orange brings to this super savory hand pie - similar to my traditional cajun butter sauce for seafood recipe. But if you're out of oranges and need another citrus option, either lemon or lime zest will be an adequate substitute.
To store, transfer hand pies to an airtight container and keep in the refrigerator for us to 2 days.
Heat leftover pies in the oven at 350โ for about 8 minutes, or until just heated through.
Easy Homemade Crawfish Hand Pie Recipe
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 12
Ingredients
12 empanada shells
1 egg white (for brushing)
4 tablespoons butter
ยฝ cup yellow onion, diced
ยฝ cup green and red bell peppers, diced
ยฝ cup celery, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup milk
2 cups crawfish tails
ยผ cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs
ยผ cup green onions, chopped
ยผ cup flat leaf parsley, diced
1 ยฝ teaspoons Old Bay Seasoning (or cajun seasoning)
ยฝ teaspoon orange zest
ยผ teaspoon black pepper
ยผ teaspoon cayenne pepper
ยผ teaspoon white pepper
Sea salt, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.ย Next, prepare the filling.ย Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add diced onion, green and red bell pepper, celery and garlic, along with a pinch of sea salt. Saute onion and other veggies until tender and fragrant, about 6-7 minutes.ย
- Add the milk and crawfish tails to the pan of veggies and mix gently, giving the seafood a minute to heat through. Add the seasoned breadcrumbs, green onions, parsley, Old Bay Seasoning, orange zest and the ground black, cayenne and white peppers. Let the seasoned crawfish mixture heat through, then taste and add additional salt, pepper or Old Bay, as needed.ย
- Spoon 2-3 tablespoons of crawfish filling into each empanada shell. Fold over and use the tines of a fork to crimp the edges closed. Brush the top of the crust with the beaten egg wash. Sprinkle with a little flaky salt. Transfer the assembled pies to a baking sheet. Bake in preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes, rotating the pan in the oven as needed to achieve a golden brown crust.ย
- After removing from the oven, let the pies sit for 5 minutes before serving. Delicious with spicy aioli sauce or a bottle of hot sauce.
- Prep Time: 20
- Cook Time: 25
- Category: Easy Recipes
- Method: Oven and Stove Top
- Cuisine: American, Cajun
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