What to expect when your lobster arrives

What to expect when your lobster arrives/How to handle the precious cargo

Be sure to check that your lobster is alive immediately upon receipt.

It will arrive in a Styrofoam casing, wrapped in seaweed and wet newspaper for added insulation. Its claws will have thick rubber bands on them. You don’t need to remove the rubber bands until after cooking is complete.

Your lobster(s) have probably had a long journey. When you first open the package, the lobster may appear sluggish at first. Remove the lobster(s) out of the box and place on a counter top or in the kitchen sink to revive them. Don’t put your lobsters in tap water! Tap water will suffocate and prematurely kill them.

You should cook your live lobster as soon as you can after receiving it, but if you must, refrigerate it (them) in the original packaging until just before cooking. Even with refrigeration you shouldn’t wait more than one day to cook. The longer you wait to cook, the more degenerated the lobster becomes.
If you can’t refrigerate, keep your lobsters in their original packaging along with the cold packs and newspaper. Just put the top back on the carton until they are ready to be cooked the same day.

Please keep away from any ovens, grills or anything emitting serious heat.

Basic lobster preparation

The most common and delicious way of preparing lobster also happens to be the easiest. Begin by putting about 3-4 inches of water in the bottom of a large stock pot (the more lobster you are cooking, the bigger your stock pot will need to be). You don’t need a lot of water because this method is to steam the lobster, not boil it.

Bring the water to a rolling boil. Do NOT add salt.

Next, place the live lobsters head first into the boiling water. Cover the pot immediately and protect yourself from boiling water that might splash onto you from the pot.

Begin timing the lobster once the water returns to a second boil. Refer to the chart below for approximate steaming times, but the only real way to know when they’re ready is to check the meat under the tail for doneness. Also, the shell will be pink or bright red when it is finished.

Remove the lobster from the water to check for doneness. If it isn’t ready, place it back in the pot at two-minute intervals until the steaming is complete.

Weight of Live Lobsters and Live Crabs and Approximate Cooking Time

1 lb – 12minutes
1.50 lb – 13 minutes
2.0 lb – 14 minutes
3 lb – 16 minutes
over 3 lb or more – Add 30 seconds per pound to cooking time.

After your lobster is steamed, you can serve it immediately with drawn butter and lemon OR harvesting the meat for some other application involving lobster meat. Either way, if you’ve never done it before, here are some helpful tips about getting to the meat of the lobster:

Shucking a lobster (not necessarily in this order):

• Twist off the claws. Crack each claw and knuckle with a lobster or nut cracker. Remove the meat (most consider claw meat to be the best, most tender and succulent part of the lobster).
• Separate the tail from the body and break off the tail flippers. There is meat to be extracted from each flipper.
• Pull or push the tail meat out in one piece. Remove and discard the black vein running the length of the tail meat.
• Pull apart the carapace to separate the shell of the body from the underside. Discard (or set aside for use) the green substance ( it’s called tomalley – basically it’s the liver and the pancreas).
• Open the body by cracking it apart in the middle (or you can cut it down the middle using kitchen shears), with the small walking legs on either side. Extract the meat from the leg joints and the legs themselves by biting down on the leg and squeezing the meat out with your teeth.
• Have plenty of wet napkins and lemon juice for clean up. If you rub lemon wedges (you can use the spent ones that went into making your butter dip) on your hands, it will neutralize the “fish” smell from your hands better than any dish or hand soap.

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