Ok, so now that you have read Part I – Cooking, you are looking at this large, bright red, steaming hot, mouthwatering delicacy on your plate and you just aren’t sure what to do with it, right? Well, read on and you will find that it’s not at all difficult and with the tips and tricks I have given you, you will be offering these delicious crustaceans more often at home.
Before you begin to tear into your lobster, have on hand a lobster cracker or handheld nutcracker, a tiny fork or lobster pick, a fork, a bowl for your shells (only shells if you want to use them later for stock) and extra napkins. Now, I like to clean my lobster completely and then enjoy the meat, snagging morsels here and there just because I am impatient. You can clean and eat as you go or you can clean the whole thing and enjoy your entire lobster when the work is done. It’s up to you. Here, for the sake of simplicity and brevity, I am going to run through the whole process; feel free to insert your own nibbling where ever you like!
You will probably also want a generous portion of melted butter in which you will dip your lobster meat. Some people prefer drawn butter, others clarified butter and some lemon or pepper butter. I say melt down a big ol’ batch of plain salted butter and pour it into small bowls or ramekins so you can get a whole chunk of meat right down in there and all covered with that salty goodness.
Let’s get started! Remove the small legs from the bottom of the lobster by grasping them as close to the body as you can and twisting them off. You can either use your pick to get the tiny but delicious morsels out of these legs or you can “pull” the meat out with your teeth. The feeling of a shell scraping against your teeth isn’t all that pleasant for most people so here’s a workaround. Place the twisted off end of the leg in between your bottom and top front teeth above each knuckle and gradually “bite” your way down the leg to the opening. This will push the meat down through the shell into your mouth. Break off the leg where you first started biting and repeat to get the rest.
Now twist off the claws, again close to the body. (One claw may be much larger than the other; this claw is “crushing” claw and the other is the “tearing” claw.) Twist off the “leg” parts of the claws and use your pick or your mini-fork to dig out the sweet meat inside. You may need to crack the larger pieces with your cracker. To do this more easily, place the claw “legs” in the cracker so that the thinner dimension of the “leg” is at right angles to the cracker so you are cracking across the narrower part of the shell and not the flatter part. This will give you better leverage and you will be able to open the shell as opposed to just crushing it. Fish out all those little nuggets!
Now pull off the pincer parts of the claws (the little parts that look like thumbs). Often when you pull these off, any meat inside stays attached to the claw; if not, feel free to dig with your pick. Use your cracker to crack through the pointed end of the claw and break away the shell. The crushed claw will be likely harder to crack. If it is really stubborn, change the positioning of your cracker and if it really won’t break, smash it with your kitchen mallet or meat tenderizer! Using your fork or finger, push the meat through this break.
Now attack the tail! Using a twisting motion, twist the tail free from the body. If may find waxy rose red clumps inside. This is lobster roe, called coral. These are unfertilized eggs and are considered a delicacy by many. You may also find some green, soft, pasty looking stuff inside the body and on the tail meat. This is tomalley, lobster liver, and it, too is delicious despite its unattractive appearance. People are divided on whether or not consumption of this is safe. I ate it for many years and recently stopped because lobsters are indeed bottom feeders of the ocean and they likely do consume some things we’d rather not think about. Given that the liver is the toxin filter in any creature, it is not silly to assume that anything toxic a lobster consumed would be in his liver. So, sadly, I no longer eat the tomalley, but scrape it away instead.
Pull the tiny flippers off the bottom of the tail, inspecting each one for its own tiny sweet offering before discarding. Once those have been removed you will need to execute some hand gymnastics but you will be so happy once you have completed this step! Assuming you are right handed, take the lobster tail shell down in your left hand and flatten it out as much as you can; hold it in this flattened out position as well as you can. Using your right hand, take your fork, tines down, and insert it as far as you can into the tail, without getting tangled in the meat, between the shell and the meat on the side that is facing up. (Got that? Read it again.). When you are in as far as you can go, rock the tines down into the meat and pull, using gentle downward pressure to move the meat toward you and out of the shell. You may have to pull a bit and reinsert the fork to get the meat all the way out.
Got it? Good for you! That was the hardest part. Before you is the tail with a thinner flatter section on what was the upperside of the lobster. Strip that off the tail. Inspect the inside surface for a whitish tube with dark brown or black paste inside. Yes, that’s the digestive tract and it’s not that yucky! Just pull it off with your fingers or your fork and discard. If it is not there, check in the cleft in the tail that was exposed when your stripped off that last piece.
Now you have removed all of the larger parts of the meat and you can feel quite accomplished! If you are feeling adventurous you can split the body and explore for other small nuggets of meat.
If you have segregated your shells from the other waste you can bag them up and freeze them for later or make your stock now. Simply boil the shells with your seasonings and freeze the stock when done. Lobster stock makes a delicious addition to chowder and sauces and freezes well.
Now that you have prepared and eaten your lobster at home you will find plenty of occasions where this will be the perfect offering. You can serve these with confidence and even help other lobster newbies learn how to break down their own delicious dinners!
Brenda Crawshaw
Article Source: Brenda Crawshaw == Lobster at Home – Part II – Breaking II wn
