HOUSTON, TX. (REUTERS) – The last place you might expect to find a cooked crawfish is atop a mound of ice cream, but that is exactly what an ice cream shop in Houston, Texas, serves during peak crawfish season in the spring.
Red Circle Ice Cream owner Nickey Ngo said she started serving crawfish ice cream in 2019, when she came up with the idea while eating crawfish at a family seafood boil.
Red Circle Ice Cream in Houston serves crafish ice cream during the peak spring season.(REUTERS)
The process starts with mixing melted butter, Cajun spices, garlic, and other ingredients before adding live crawfish to cook. Those crawfish juices, butter, and seasoning are then added to a cream base that is churned by a machine into crawfish ice cream. A cooked crawfish is placed on top, claws dangling over the dish.
“We cook down our ice cream mix and we put all of the Cajun seasoning in there. What makes it special, of course, is there’s lots of butter, garlic and the whole nine yards. And once that bubbles up nice and good, we add the live crawfish in there, we give it a little bake, bath there for like a little while, get all that seasoning inside that crawfish. And then we put it and we make ice cream with that.”
Ngo offers some advice before serving curious customers a sample of crawfish ice cream, which has a sweet, salty, and spicy taste that is decidedly seafood-flavored.
“I ask them, ‘Do you want a chaser?’” Ngo said. “And then I recommend, obviously, don’t kiss anybody after I give you the sample.”
Ngo recommends diners first eat the crawfish meat after twisting the crustacean’s head off and then use that head to scoop the ice cream like a spoon.
“Now obviously you want to break off the tail, suck on the meat. Got a little bit of a kick, right? You eat the meat. You take it, and you scoop it up,” she said. “Insanely good.”
Reviews among customers were mixed, with some scowling and others pleasantly surprised after a taste of crawfish ice cream. Customer Lauren Moore said the flavors worked just right.
“I do like it,” Moore said. ”It’s like, a little salty, but it’s like, creamy, smooth. A little spicy.”
“It’s different, it’s like, not your typical ice cream, for sure. But, I mean, it’s really worth a try, though. I love trying new foods, so this is really good.”
Ngo said that by late January, she starts getting calls from customers asking for crawfish ice cream.
“We wouldn’t bring it back if people weren’t demanding it,” Ngo said.
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