Shooting from the hip: Lousiana’s Pistolette

The Pistolette from New Orleans is an oval-shaped bread roll common in and around New Orleans. It’s also the name for that same bread roll hollowed out, stuffed with a seafood stew and deep fried. Some recipes call for coring them like an apple and stuffing the filling in the hole. Some recipes call for slicing off the top and hollowing them out. Some recipes simply slice them open like a sandwich roll. Is this really a sandwich though, or a bread bowl, or some kind of savory donut? I have seen them called stuffed beignets.

It’s a question that probably only firsthand knowledge of life in New Orleans could properly answer, but travel wasn’t on the agenda for this month at the Tribunal, so I had to settle for making my own best approximation. Let’s start with the rolls.

There are a few recipes for these pistolette rolls out there on the internet but the first one I found looked the most promising, using a preferment for flavor and bread flour for good structure. The recipe turns out 12 good-sized golden brown rolls that are a bit too big for a standard baking sheet without having them stick together a bit.

Now, I could probably cut one of these open, put in some ham and cheese, and technically I’d have a stuffed pistolette. But everything I read about them says they are generally stuffed with a mixture of crawfish or shrimp, vegetables, and a thick sauce. In researching recipes, I found a lot that used cream of mushroom soup as the sauce, or cream of shrimp, along with onion, celery, green pepper, garlic, green onion, cajun seasoning, and the seafood (or swampfood) of choice.

To me, it sounded like what they were doing was making a crawfish étouffée but shortcutting the roux. By shortcutting the roux, in my mind, you’re shortchanging yourself of a lot of flavor. Looking a little deeper into standard étouffée wisdom, it does seem like a roux is not always recommended, if you’re using fresh crawfish and additional crawfish fat. However, since I’d be using bags of frozen crawfish tails from the freezer section at Walmart, a roux was probably my best bet.

Many of the recipes I found also added cheese, mostly in the form of processed American cheese or even Velveeta. Let’s set that idea aside for now and concentrate on the étouffée. I used a shrimp étouffée recipe, substituting frozen crawfish tails for the shrimp and storebought stock for the homemade shrimp shell stock. For the Cajun seasoning, I used “Slap Ya Mama” brand that I was able to find locally. Upon learning that it contained only salt, red pepper, black pepper, and garlic, I felt like slapping myself.

I let the roux cook until it was slightly darker than peanut butter, then mixed in my “holy trinity” of diced onion, green peppers, and celery. I used serrano peppers rather than jalapeno–I just like them better, and the store didn’t have any jalapenos anyway. I used a bit too much of the stock, so I let the sauce cook down a while longer than necessary, before adding the crawfish and green onion. The étouffée itself was terrific, as good as any I’ve made.

I also made some rice and beans as a side dish, since I had a hambone that needed using and it seemed like a good time for it.

For making the sandwiches, I used a steak knife to remove a “plug” from one end of the roll, then to scoop out most of the crumb from inside the roll.

After putting about 3 tablespoons of étouffée into the hollowed out roll, I replaced the plug and used a toothpick to secure it. Then I fried the rolls in a 12″ cast iron skillet with about an inch of vegetable oil in it. I fried them for about 3-4 minutes on each side, and now I see why some people call them beignets.

After frying, that inch of vegetable oil had become maybe a half-inch of oil. Don’t ever let anybody tell you these things are healthy.

I cut the pistolettes in half and plated them with the beans and rice. It was a good-looking lunch.

I could go on and on about how great my red beans & rice turned out, but you’re here for the sandwiches.

They were pretty damn good. The crawfish tails weren’t the best quality, and over the course of cooking in the étouffée and then again while the rolls were fried, had become a bit rubbery, but not terribly so. The sauce from the roux had soaked into what was left of the bread crumb, softening it and adding its own flavor, and the frying gave the outside of the rolls a crisp texture, a bit on the greasy side but in a good way.

So that’s it, that’s all I have to say about pistolettes, you can all go home now.

OK, I admit it, the fan of lowbrow food in me was maybe a little curious about the cheesy pistolette recipes I’d read. Fine, I was very curious about them, enough to buy a box of Velveeta and melt a few chunks into some of my leftover étouffée. I didn’t feel good about deep frying another set of rolls though, so I used an alternate prep method for the pistolettes. Instead of coring them, I cut off the tops and hollowed them out. Yes, like a bread bowl.

Then I put about 4 tablespoons of cheesy étouffée into each roll, replaced the top, brushed the rolls with butter, and baked them in the oven at 375° for 20 minutes.

These rolls did not have the crisp greasy surface of the previous ones–the flavor of the butter was better, but the texture of the deep fried rolls couldn’t be beat. Still, they looked more like sandwiches than donuts this way.

The filling wasn’t skimpy though, just contained. I’d been able to fit in more by filling them this way actually, and despite my misgivings about the Velveeta, the waxy texture bound the sauce together in a way that kept it from soaking into the crumb quite so much, resulting in a volcanic eruption of cheesy delight that turned a relatively elegant treat into a beard-sticking, plate-licking mess that I would 100% go for again.

The pistolette may or may not be a sandwich in your eyes–it wouldn’t be the first sandwich-adjacent item we’ve covered, and I do tend to be more inclusive in the sandwich category than most–but it’s kind of a neat regional treat, an interesting way to use leftover rolls and étouffée that became a thing in its own right. If I ever do make it down to New Orleans, sure I’ll have to try the muffulettas and the po boys, but I hope I’d find a place where I could give these a shot as well, if only to see how I did.