Crawfish and Potato Breakfast Hash
Canned crawfish tails, dried hash browns, and green chiles in one skillet. A camp breakfast built on a shelf-stable version of a boil leftover.
- calories
- 540
- weight
- 6 oz
- cal / oz
- 90
- protein
- 28 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 20 min
- total time
- 25 min
- water
- 500 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Breakfast
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Canned or vacuum-packed crawfish tail meat | 2 cups, about 1 lb | drain hard; canned shrimp works if crawfish is scarce |
|---|---|---|
| Dehydrated hash brown potatoes | 3 cups dry | the boxed shredded kind, not frozen |
| Olive oil | 2 tbsp | |
| Ghee or shelf-stable butter powder | 2 tbsp | ghee does not need a cooler |
| Dried minced onion | 3 tbsp | |
| Canned fire-roasted green chiles | 1 can, 7 oz | drained |
| Garlic powder | 1 tsp | |
| Sweet paprika | 1 tsp | |
| Black pepper | 1/4 tsp | |
| Salt | to taste | |
| Dried parsley | 1 tbsp | |
| Grated parmesan | 1 oz | the dry shaker kind keeps for weeks |
Method
- Put the dried hash browns and minced onion in the pot and cover with about 500 ml of boiled water. Let them sit 10 minutes, then drain off whatever water is left. Wet potatoes will steam instead of brown.
- Heat the oil and ghee in the skillet until the oil moves fast. Spread the drained potatoes in an even layer and leave them alone for five minutes.
- Turn them once with a spatula and give them another five. You want brown edges, not uniform mush.
- Stir in the chiles, garlic powder, paprika, pepper, and salt. Cook two minutes to dry the chiles out.
- Add the crawfish tails last and heat through, about three minutes. They are already cooked, so longer just makes them rubbery.
- Kill the heat, scatter the parsley and parmesan over the top, and serve straight from the pan.
A crawfish boil leaves you with a pile of peeled tails and a fridge, neither of which exists at camp. Canned or vacuum-packed tails get you the same meat off the shelf, and the boxed dehydrated hash browns stand in for the frozen bag. Both changes cost you nothing but a rehydration step.
The drain matters more than anything else here. Potatoes that go into the pan still holding soak water will never crisp, and the whole dish turns into a gray scramble. Ghee replaces the butter because it sits at 90 degrees in a car all day without turning. Crawfish goes in at the very end for the same reason you would not boil it twice.
Packing
Combine the hash browns, minced onion, garlic powder, paprika, pepper, and parsley in one bag at home. The chiles, crawfish, and parmesan ride in their own containers. Carry the ghee in a screw-top jar, not a squeeze tube.
Variations
- Dice in a stick of shelf-stable summer sausage while the potatoes brown for more fat and salt.
- A few dashes of hot sauce at the end replaces the spice a real boil would have left in the tails.
- Fry an egg per person on top if you carried eggs in a hard case.
https://realtree.com/timber-2-table-wild-game-recipes/crawfish-breakfast-hash