Lobster at Home - Part II - Breaking it Down

[Louis Lee]

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!

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