Hello, my name is Ray Hayes. I am the Executive Chef here, and you are watching my series on lobsters. Now I am going to show how to de-shell, crack, and eat the lobsters.
Now we have got our lobsters steamed up here, how you are going to get in to the meat? This is what we are going to show you now. So we are going to show how to take these lobsters. Have you ever had an Indian burn on your hand? Same thing. We are going to twist this up, this way, this is the cavity here. Then we are going to take this leg and I break right off at the joint—claw, claw. If you want, if you really feel like getting all you can out of a lobster, you can take these pieces here and break them off at the joints and suck on them like a straw and there is little tiny pieces of lobster meat in there also.
But for the meantime, we are going to do these. This side is a one big piece of meat on the inside of the lobster, there is a small thin piece here, so the way to get them out of there is to break this backwards all the way, until this cartilage comes out, and when that cartilage comes out, that means this is separated in here as well as this. We have our little oyster fork or cocktail fork, you can get inside the meat there, get inside that claw and get this meat out. So now the claw is empty, there is your lobster meat. We are going to do the same thing over here, but again, you are going to work at a joint at a time.
So you pull this off, so you get some of the cartilage out of there and then we have to break this. You are going to need lobster crackers or nut crackers, either one will work on this. All you have to do is crack this shell, so once you have cracked the shell, you pull the top meat off, then you get your fork again and get that nice, big piece of lobster meat to come out the shell, shell is empty, there is your lobster. So here we go again, it is a repeat of the same side. You take the smaller part of the claw and you pull it up until this cartilage comes out. You can take your fork, this one is a little bit tighter because of the smallness of the shell of the meat—here we go.
Sometimes you might need a little help, a little bamboo skewer or a lobster pick works very well, you take this meat, put your lobster claws over here, now we are to the same thing like we did the other one, we are going to break this, separate it, take your little fork and there we go, empty shell, little meat and that is that. There we go, that is it, instant lobster claw meat ready to go.
If you notice, this green that is inside the lobster here, this is called Tamale. This particular green stuff in the lobster here is the algae that the lobster eats. So some people like it, some people don't. We get the lobster out of the shell, we twist off the fins on the bottom and you are just going to separate the shell this way.
So in order to get into the lobster meat and the shell here, you want to take this, squeeze it together and twist, you probably should use a towel because the lobster still has a little clips on it, you should break these, shell comes off in pieces, once you get to there, just take that lobster tail out, right out of the shell. There we go. Now you have lobster tail, lobster claw and we have the leg portions here and then we are done. Leg portion, do the same thing, crack them, disjoint the lobster, it is easier to work with, these are a little softer. This is the same way you did with the claw, once you get the fork inside there, you just squeeze the shell a little bit and pull the lobster right out.
You have to be careful now. They have little thorns on them and they hurt. Some people, especially the ones that are allergic to them, they get popped with one of these and then they get ill. Here we go and that is how you shell a lobster.
Now for the people who really like the lobster, they like to this. They take the little lobster legs, they break them off at their joints and they squeeze them and then suck on it, they suck on it like a straw and you get the lobster meat right off the legs and they are really good. So there you have it. This is your basic, everyday, everywhere kind of steamed or boiled lobster, out of the shell, the shell here is empty and we just have these nice big chunks of lobster meat that we are going to tear apart and we are going to make sure we did this right. So we are going to dip it in that butter, oh yeah, that was a 1995 bite right there and that is really good—excellent lobster.
So now you have seen how we do the regular prepared lobster in water, next what we are going to do is take another lobster, cut in half and show how to stuff one, broil one.