Consider Cooking The Lobster
June 18, 2016 12:18 PM Subscribe
The Food Lab finishes of a week of Lobster talk (how to buy and store, soft shell vs. hard shell) with the definative answer to "How do you cook and shuck a lobster?"
My experience is that cooking lobsters is insanely easy (though checking periodically to make sure my captives didn't for before I could kill then felt a little deranged), and shucking them took an hour, every tool in my kitchen, and involved shucking myself at least a quarter of the time.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:05 PM on June 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:05 PM on June 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
This looks great, but makes me want to buy lobster less. It's so expensive, I get too anxious about cooking it wrong, I give up and get something else.
posted by skewed at 1:10 PM on June 18, 2016
posted by skewed at 1:10 PM on June 18, 2016
That was wonderful informative and made me dream of melted butter and fresh lobster flesh. *smacks lips* Hmmmm I don't think I've had roasted lobster, I wonder what I'm doing tomorrow night. . . .
Other great ways of eating lobster:
1) Sit around a lobster pot with potatoes and corn with really good friends with whom you saved money for weeks for this feast, and never mind that none of you really know how to cook or eat it, because you are now having a dramatic argument about whether or not eating a lobster is the closest thing any of you will get to eating a trilobite. There will be a level of pedantry you will have not thought possible about eating arthropods. It's glorious.
2) And the best way to eat lobster is after a hard day of working on the coastline of Nova Scotia - when you're just filthy and a little terrified after the guy you hired to take you in a boat to the small nubbin of beach below the cliffs you're working on showed up to pick you up much later after high tide started coming in then you really wanted. But when he takes you to the dock there's his brother who has traps and just came in himself with all this fresh lobster, so he invites you up to his house, and you and his family sit down on the little deck overlooking the sea and eat all the lobster you can handle (and did they actually cook it in seawater?), while drinking beer, laughing at your clumsy lobster mauling and the kind of stories you only hear in Nova Scotia, and watching that famous high tide come in just as the sun casts that long evening light of the northern latitudes over the Bay and you would swear that the wind is carrying sea spray up just for you. . . .
*comes back to reality* I mean, IMHO, that's the best way to eat lobster.
posted by barchan at 1:17 PM on June 18, 2016 [11 favorites]
Other great ways of eating lobster:
1) Sit around a lobster pot with potatoes and corn with really good friends with whom you saved money for weeks for this feast, and never mind that none of you really know how to cook or eat it, because you are now having a dramatic argument about whether or not eating a lobster is the closest thing any of you will get to eating a trilobite. There will be a level of pedantry you will have not thought possible about eating arthropods. It's glorious.
2) And the best way to eat lobster is after a hard day of working on the coastline of Nova Scotia - when you're just filthy and a little terrified after the guy you hired to take you in a boat to the small nubbin of beach below the cliffs you're working on showed up to pick you up much later after high tide started coming in then you really wanted. But when he takes you to the dock there's his brother who has traps and just came in himself with all this fresh lobster, so he invites you up to his house, and you and his family sit down on the little deck overlooking the sea and eat all the lobster you can handle (and did they actually cook it in seawater?), while drinking beer, laughing at your clumsy lobster mauling and the kind of stories you only hear in Nova Scotia, and watching that famous high tide come in just as the sun casts that long evening light of the northern latitudes over the Bay and you would swear that the wind is carrying sea spray up just for you. . . .
*comes back to reality* I mean, IMHO, that's the best way to eat lobster.
posted by barchan at 1:17 PM on June 18, 2016 [11 favorites]
No.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 1:31 PM on June 18, 2016 [15 favorites]
posted by Hairy Lobster at 1:31 PM on June 18, 2016 [15 favorites]
I was very confused about how missed this, since serious eats is one of the sites I refresh obsessively during the week. Then I noticed these articles were from 2013. Time for a re-read!
posted by sevenyearlurk at 2:25 PM on June 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by sevenyearlurk at 2:25 PM on June 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
Every time the lobster is compared to a cockroach my lust for lobster took a steep drop. Luckily I will forget this after a while.
posted by Splunge at 2:49 PM on June 18, 2016
posted by Splunge at 2:49 PM on June 18, 2016
It's so expensive, I get too anxious about cooking it wrong, I give up and get something else.
Which I why I think lobster should only be eaten a few weeks in the summer on the upper north east coast, ideally mid to downeast Maine where even a small rural grocer can't give them away.
Lobster is dear in NYC but I might get a small one to try out this method for a Thai lobster salad.
(Get used to eating bugs! Land shrimp is the new viable protein.)
posted by The Whelk at 2:50 PM on June 18, 2016
Which I why I think lobster should only be eaten a few weeks in the summer on the upper north east coast, ideally mid to downeast Maine where even a small rural grocer can't give them away.
Lobster is dear in NYC but I might get a small one to try out this method for a Thai lobster salad.
(Get used to eating bugs! Land shrimp is the new viable protein.)
posted by The Whelk at 2:50 PM on June 18, 2016
Pshaw. That's not how you cook a lobster. This is how you cook a lobster.
posted by slkinsey at 2:59 PM on June 18, 2016
posted by slkinsey at 2:59 PM on June 18, 2016
The local lobster fest happens to fall on my birthday each year. Last time we had some Nova Scotia folk at our table, they were adamant on having a dish of vinegar to dip lobster meat in before they dipped it in the butter. It was fine, but no real revelation.
posted by furtive at 3:05 PM on June 18, 2016
posted by furtive at 3:05 PM on June 18, 2016
Also, does anyone else remember the episode of Simply Ming where he poaches a lobster in 5lbs of butter.
posted by furtive at 3:06 PM on June 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by furtive at 3:06 PM on June 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Which I why I think lobster should only be eaten a few weeks in the summer on the upper north east coast, ideally mid to downeast Maine
No lobsters anywhere else, nope.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:07 PM on June 18, 2016
No lobsters anywhere else, nope.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:07 PM on June 18, 2016
The easiest, most painless way to deal with lobster in my opinion is to eat Dungeness crab instead.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 5:14 PM on June 18, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 5:14 PM on June 18, 2016 [5 favorites]
No lobsters anywhere else, nope.
Sure there are, but the further you get from Maine the more likely you are to end up with a person in a "sexy lobster" costume instead, and that rarely ends well.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:43 PM on June 18, 2016
Sure there are, but the further you get from Maine the more likely you are to end up with a person in a "sexy lobster" costume instead, and that rarely ends well.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:43 PM on June 18, 2016
When I was a teenager, I spent a short time helping out on an inshore commercial fishing boat on the Isles of Scilly. Mostly hand-hauled lobster and crab pots and a bit of line fishing for mackerel and pollack. One thing I learned is that you I eat crab sandwiches every day without minding (although one might not be very popular in enclosed spaces while on this diet), but that, on the days that lobster was in surfeit (the only sales being to the island hotel and direct to holidaymakers), it quickly bored me. It's nice meat, in its way, but its modern reputation may as much a product of scarcity as of any particular excellence. It is definitely helped by bright clean flavours like ginger, chilli, lemongrass etc, though.
I've noticed, under other circumstances, that the above observation does not, in my case, generalise to oysters. I can eat a dozen oysters a day, every day, and, when I'm living in places where that's not a financially ruinous diet, I tend to do so.
posted by howfar at 4:48 AM on June 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
I've noticed, under other circumstances, that the above observation does not, in my case, generalise to oysters. I can eat a dozen oysters a day, every day, and, when I'm living in places where that's not a financially ruinous diet, I tend to do so.
posted by howfar at 4:48 AM on June 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm surprised Kenji didn't break out the sous vide equipment. Maybe vacuum sealing a live creature (or dead but still twitching) was too H. R. Giger for fine dining?
posted by mccarty.tim at 5:19 AM on June 19, 2016
posted by mccarty.tim at 5:19 AM on June 19, 2016
Dungeness crab is frequently more pricey than lobster here in Vancouver, which is insane being that the crab comes from three blocks that way whereas the lobster rides to my belly in the belly of a 747. We bought a brown crab from England a couple weeks ago (cheaper than local dungeness) and while good, wasn't dungeness. It did contain the most insanely delicious brown meat, like the most custardy creamy chawanamushi (sp?) as a consolation prize however.
posted by Keith Talent at 2:26 PM on June 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Keith Talent at 2:26 PM on June 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
The correct way to eat a lobster is the way Grampy Laddie taught me when I was ten. End of story.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:55 PM on June 19, 2016
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:55 PM on June 19, 2016
The best lobster I ever had was Gulf Coast lobster boiled in Zatarain's crawfish boil. So spicy, so good.
posted by domo at 9:37 AM on June 20, 2016
posted by domo at 9:37 AM on June 20, 2016
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posted by TWinbrook8 at 12:57 PM on June 18, 2016 [2 favorites]