Lobster

Lobster is a New England seacoast delicacy. Today it is shipped around the world. It is the easiest seafood to cook. Drop the lobster in a pot of boiling water and cook, or buy ready cooked.

Fresh lobster is boiled, broiled, and stuffed and baked. Cooked lobster meat is made into chowder, stew, bisque, and Newburg, as well as salad and many other dishes. Lobster Stew and chowder are the same just called by different names. They are simply shelled meat is cut up and heated in milk and butter. The deluxe version calls for clam broth and light cream. Lobster Bisque is a rich soup flavored with onion and celery and thickened. Lobster Newburg is lobster served in a rich sauce made of cream, egg yolks, butter and wine.

A Maine woman living in southeastern Massachusetts circa 1960’s contributed a recipe called Maine Lobster Stew, to “What Special Cooks Serve” by the women of the Parkway Community Methodist Church, in Milton, MA. She used the cooked lobster shells to make a broth. The broth included onions and celery. She strained the broth, added milk and thickened it with cracker crumbs, a common method. She put the soup in bowls or cups, and added small amounts of cooked, diced lobster meat. Cook books call this Lobster Bisque.

Here are two lobster recipes. For more seafood recipes check out The New Legal Seafood Cookbook.

Boiled Lobster

In a large pot, fill ¾’s full with water, add two teaspoons salt, and bring water to a boil. Plunge live lobster head first into boiling water. Bring water back to a boil, turn down to a simmer and cook ten to twenty minutes depending upon size of lobster. An extra large pot can hold several lobsters.

Boiled lobsters are eaten dipped in clarified butter. To remove meat, crack the claws and pull the meat out. The tail is broken off and split down the middle. Remove the black vein and cut into pieces. For more detailed explanation on what is edible see a cook book.

Clarified Butter

Melt butter in a small sauce pan. Skim off the foam. Let the sediment settle to the bottom. Ladle off the clear liquid, this is your clarified butter.

Lobster Bisque

2 Lobsters, cooked (boiled)
Remove the meat from claws and tail; cut in small pieces and reserve
Remove the shell from the body
Break off the legs (small quantity of meat inside)
Crush the shells (claws, body, tail, legs)

Add crushed shells to:
2½ cups water*
1 sliced onion
2 stalks of celery with leaves, sliced thick
Cover and bring to a boil, turn down and simmer thirty minutes
Strain the liquid, reserve

In a sauce pan:
¼ cup butter, melted
Mix in:
¼ cup flour
Add:
2½ cups heated milk
Blend until smooth
Stir in strained lobster broth
Add lobster meat
Bring to boil, turn down heat, and simmer 5 minutes

Stir in:
1 cup hot cream (must be hot but not boiling)

Garnish:
Chopped Parsley
Paprika

*Most cook book recipes call for clam broth or chicken broth instead of water. This is optional. The recipe presented here is based on the Maine Lobster Stew recipe which called for water.