Christmas Lobsters!

"The only kind of seafood I trust is the fish stick, a totally featureless fish that doesn't have eyeballs or fins."
- Dave Barry

So, I'm going to kick this off with a confession: I have never cooked a lobster. I've eaten lobster, I've watched lobster be grilled, boiled, steamed, and whatever else. I've eaten it in sushi, in lobster rolls, and as tails and claws. But I've never cooked it myself. I understand the various ways to cook one, but when it comes down to the honest truth, I have never cooked one. Until now? Read on, for a new experience I had while I was home for the holidays.

I have an Uncle that lives in Maine (Hey there, Uncle Paul!), and enjoys lobster on a semi-regular basis. I mean, compared to most people across the country, it's semi-regular. I don't have some weird knowledge of his lobster-eating timetable. I tend to spend my holidays back home in Oregon, where I grew up. It's a short flight away from new-home Southern California, and it's always nice to see family and old friends when I'm back. But this time, my Uncle seemed to have some plans for me.

I think I'm being set up.

Later in the conversation, I decide to be a little bit more forward, since I'm still really not understanding what's going on. He then lays it all out for me.

Uh oh.

So, at this moment, it has set in that I have never really cooked a lobster. I've cooked crab and shrimp, but never the giant "sea bug". And then panic sets in:

And then some panicked googling occurs:

And then some more panic:

 And then more googling:

See the pattern?

So once I figured out what the hell was going on, I started to figure out how exactly I would go about cooking the beasts. Since I had a week to figure it out, I wasn't really too worried. I saw that my aunt (who had also received lobsters) cooked them for something like 12 minutes, and the internet said 12-18. So I figured I'd do middle of the road. But more on that in a bit.

Once I was home, I almost forgot about the secret lobsters. I had to ask lots of questions about dinner without giving it away. And though my mom pressed me for information, she didn't get anything outside of "something special. Don't worry about it." Fast forward to Tuesday, Official Lobsterfest Day, and this hulking box shows up out of nowhere:

"What in the hell is... oh yeah. Crap."

After some poking and prodding, I decide to open up the thing, and find my savory seafarers:

This dude probably has no idea what's in store for him.

This lobsterfriend was sitting on top of the whole thing, just chilling out. When lobsters are shipped to you, they're alive and well, but kept extremely cold, which slows them down a bit. So he wasn' overly active at first, but aa the day went on, my sister and I could hear them scraping the inside of the cooler, trying to get out. It was a terrifying noise that was reminiscent of a Tell-Tale Heart-themed fever dream. We had to stop thinking about it.

Eventually, my mom got home, and we presented her with the surprise of what was for dinner:

Merry Christmas?

And after reading the instructional pamphlet ("How to cook and not screw this up, Scott"), we let Mom play with the lobsters a bit.

LOBSTER FRIENDS!

I know if sounds silly, but it's not often you get to play with these little buggers. They flap around a bit, and try to pinch you with their rubberband-ed claws. It's adorable. Though admittedly, my mom always told me to not play with my food. She's not leading by example, here.

When it became time to cook the lobsters, we got a few pots of saltwater boiling, and figured we could probably get three lobsters in one pot, and one would fly solo in the smaller pots. It worked pretty well.

Cooking apparati.

There's a surprisingly little amount of prep for lobsters. You're going to need some side dishes, a lot of butter, some lemons, and boiling hot water. Some people will cut into the head of their lobsters to kill them, but the boil kills them within seconds, anyway. And you don't want any of that water breaking into your delicious water! So in the pot they go! But first, we make them more lethal, and act as though we're tough guys. Meanwhile, we're still just as afraid of getting pinched!

 

Snip snip, and he's DEADLY.

And this is the exact moment where my conscience decided to peace out for a while.

 After boiling for 15 minutes, we plated them up, and served with some roasted potatoes, golden corn, lots of lemon, and butter. A lot of butter. Because it needs more butter. Butter. BUTTAH.

Sometimes I think Paula Deen is my spirit animal. BUTTAH, Y'ALL.

For those of you who haven't ever had a whole lobster, they look like this:

I want you in my belly. Errday.

Eating a lobster is pretty much as barbaric as you can imagine. You just sort of go to town on the thing. I personally like to rip off the tail first, and eat that while it's still hot. Pull the fins off the back and push a thumb in to pop out the meat; it's easy! After that, I gnaw on the legs a bit, and then head towards the claws.

Personally, I think the claws are actually my favorite part. They are a little more delicate than the tail to me, and have much better flavor. The knuckles are all great, too; lots of good, tasty lobster meat. All washed down with a cold beer or a nice cold wine. Yum.

Once I was done, I was helplessly picking at the carcass, and got into the body, to find out that I had "coral", which is the roe. It's tasty! Apparently a lot of people don't dig it, but I thought it was really good. It's a bright red organ-y -looking structure. I think the rest of my family thought I was crazy, trying to find other parts of this thing to eat; it was so good!

Overall, this was a great experience. If you ever get the chance, buy some lobsters! You won't be disappointed, and it's a fun thing to do. Keep it simple, keep it tasty, and it'll come out wonderful!

The spread!

I hope you all had a fantastic holiday season. Mine was full of friend, family, food, and fun (all the 'F's!) I'll be coming back later this week with some more posts, and we'll be back to a more regular schedule in no time! 

Big thanks to my Uncle Paul for sending me a box of eight lobsters (some were turned into omelettes the next morning), and my family/girlfriend for putting up with me not knowing how to throw this together!

Cheers!

-AC