Eat Lobster
It's one of those days! Wanna get chatty about something? Something summery? Something that clicks around on your floor after you buy it and let it out onto … your floor? That's right, the lobster. The living, breathing (?), loving, laughing lobster, the most delicious of all scorpion- and spider-shaped animals. Except for crabs! Those are good, too. Soft-shell crabs, mmm. Fry one up, make a sandwich. But no, the lobster. There's only one real way to eat a lobster, and that's to boil water, drop your live lobster in headfirst while you scream "oh my god," and slam the lid on top. Five minutes later is when it's supposed to be done, but that seems suspiciously soon, and IT IS OH MY GOD the legs are still moving, so wait another five or seven minutes, and then it's all nice and still, so you crack it open and dip its flesh into liquefied butter, and that is how you eat a lobster. Lobster rolls are for idiots.
Here are some fun lobster facts to tell your friends. Or, share a lobster fact if you know one (1).
146 Comments / Post A Comment
- Sort by:
- Chronological
- Reverse-Chronological
- Popularity
Post a Comment
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
now i want to go to james hook for dinner.
@becky@twitter Didn't James Hook burn down? You might have to buy the lobster and do the dirty deed yourself.
@boyofdestiny It did, but there's a little shack there now that you can get live lobsters and lobster rolls from.
@closetalker11 I was just about to go back and edit my comment to clarify that you can, in fact, buy lobsters from the JH shack, but you beat me to it! I walk by the place almost every day, and if I don't have Boston cred in these comments, I have nothing.
@becky@twitter Yes! Not only do they have that fully operational little shack, but they have picnic tables outside. You can get a super inexpensive lobster (or crab!) roll and some bisque, and hang outside, watching tourists walk RIGHT BY on their way to Sel de la Terre or something.
@rebeccakpalermo @boyofdestiny @closetalker11 impromptu lobster meetup?
@becky@twitter How impromptu are we talking about? I've got a hot date tonight, but JH is right down the street from my apartment, so I'm usually good to go!
@boyofdestiny i work until 7 tonight anywho. don't want to overshadow the bukowskis meetup.
@becky@twitter Bukowskis meetup?
@becky@twitter: There is a Bukowskis meetup scheduled?
@boyofdestiny: Just in case she didn't answer you, I guess
@NeenerNeener @boyofdestiny check the seattle thread. not scheduled. in the process of being planned i think.
@becky@twitter I totally skipped that post. Because I'm a bad commenter.
@becky@twitter Hold the phone you guys, I'm in Boston too! I just moved here! And this very thread has caused me to come out of the woodwork for the first time and say hi and let's eat lobster together please?!
@AmeliaBadelia yay! definitely keep your eyes peeled for @Lily Rowan , who is a fantastic boston hairpin meetup planner.
@AmeliaBadelia: Yay, welcome! Would love to come into town and eat lobster with you guys, either boiled or in a roll. (As much as I love and respect her, Edith is dead wrong about lobster rolls. I had one for lunch today and felt incredibly smart!)
@Bittersweet Let's make this happen. I've got a jones for lobster roll now.
The bukowski's meetup doesn't actually exist yet, but someone mentioned it before as a place to go and it's super convenient to me, so I vote yes, but I don't know when. So there you have it.
@Bittersweet But you spend like $15 on a lobster roll and it's over in like 45 seconds, whereas the boiled lobster is much cheaper, much more fun, and about five times as satisfying. Math.
@boyofdestiny: If I weren't trying to finish up a shit-ton of work to go on vacation for 2 weeks, I'd drive in now.
@Edith: 45 seconds?!? Some of us like to relax and hang out and enjoy our lobster rolls. Like civilized people.
@boyofdestiny I had a hot date too! It was with bean dip and an IPA. It went really well, and I think we're going to see each other again!
@becky@twitter Ohhey! I'm another Boston person, but seafood makes me gag and I'm maybe crying a little inside from the idea of the poor boiled alive lobsters crying out for mercy. So maybe I'm not a good Boston person.
Lobsters enjoy smooth jazz.
@sorry your heinous: But they hate soprano saxophonists.
except for Wayne Shorter. They like Wayne Shorter.
@Art Yucko Who DOESN'T like Wayne Shorter?
Lobster facts!!! I've been training my whole life for this moment.
- Lobsters are legally barred from working in the postal service. (Too easy for them to open letters that are not addressed to them.)
- A group of lobsters is called a "chatter." A chatter of lobsters.
- Lobsters are extremely racist – but each lobster is offensive towards only one group, unique to that particular lobster! It is like their fingerprint, and the only reliable way to tell lobsters apart.
- Lobsters were once fed to prisoners in New England – live! This was called "red-coating" and was a special punishment reserved for staunch monarchists.
@deepomega LOBSTER FACT OVERFLOW ERROR.
@deepomega: Lobstermen are Lobster fishers, and not actually mutant lobster-man hybrids with giant claws and yellow overall bibs on.
@deepomega Lobsters are jealous of langostines and crayfish for their naturally slim/small physiques.
"Or, share a lobster fact if you know one (1)" glad you clarified. I was gonna tell you about my friend Randy, he is a Maine Lobster and loves Tom Clancy novels.
The phrase "cockroaches of the sea" just ruined lobsters for me.
@likethestore From DFW:
The name “lobster” comes from the Old English loppestre, which is thought to be a corrupt form of the Latin word for locust combined with the Old English loppe, which meant spider.
@nokittythisismypotpie Can anyone tell me what the lobster, family name (Nephropidae), has to do with kidneys?
@nokittythisismypotpie Aaggghh why are you doing this to me??
@likethestore I thought the cockroaches of the sea were crawfish? Mmmm, crawdads.
@likethestore The only thing I can think of is that maybe the claws are sort of shaped like a kidney? If you squint?? The family name pretty much means "kidney feet," so that's my best guess.
@likethestore they are literally giant bugs. Literally! I say I don't eat lobsters because it is ethically disgusting (I am fine with butchery in general and draw the line only at lobsters and foie gras) and that is true but mainly it is because they are so goddamn disgusting. I mean it is not ethically disgusting if you do the pin through the brain thing but JESUS who could do that.
I mean people say they are tasty but you know what, maybe roaches are tasty but here is one woman who is never going to find out. (I mean me.)
One of my favorite Brooklyn subway stories is about a lady falling asleep on the Q train with her 15 grocery bags and a lobster running out of one of them, terrorizing everyone on the train until the screaming woke her up.
My boyfriend decided to surprize me with lobster a few weeks ago and thought it was hilarious when I stuck my face in the bag and said, "What's for din-AGUGHGHGHGHGH!!!!" when the thing jumped out at me.
@parallel-lines OMG IS YOUR PROFILE PICTURE BARF?! I love you.
@parallel-lines I was just thinking "How do you even GET the lobster home from the store without it breaking out of the grocery bag?! I'm allergic to shellfish so I've never tried! I wonder if I can touch them and just not eat them….
@Kimberly Drew There was a Wegmans in Jersey where the lobsters had scanny thing on them and you were just supposed to take them to the checkout.
Fact: lobsters don't like having lasers shooting at them while their hands are bound.
Oh. Oh. That's so sad! And also so funny to picture. LOBSTER SMASH! WHY LOBSTER CLAWS STUCK?
@parallel-lines: This is why the finer grocery stores of New England will steam your lobsters for you in the store while you shop. AT NO CHARGE. Checkout counter freakouts and ethical dilemmas solved.
One of my favorite Brooklyn subway stories is about a lady falling asleep on the Q train with her 15 grocery bags and a lobster running out of one of them, terrorizing everyone on the train until the screaming woke her up.
My boyfriend decided to surprize me with lobster a few weeks ago and thought it was hilarious when I stuck my face in the bag and said, "What's for din-AGUGHGHGHGHGH!!!!" when the thing jumped out at me.
@parallel-lines Why can't I erase this – SORRY EVERYONE!
@parallel-lines Lobsters never accept verbal apologies. You'll need to sacrifice something.
If you stick them in the freezer for like, ten minutes before you chuck them in the pot, it's a kinder thing than just chucking them in the pot.
@wharrgarbl HOWWWWW?
@sox Do you mean how is it kinder? It makes them pass out. (I learned this from Alton Brown!)
This works for more than just lobsters!
@sox What DorothyMantooth said, unless you meant "How is it done?" in which case "Very carefully."
@melis True! It is also the Recommended Method for killing cane toads, which I learned in Australia, where is it part of their Civic Duty to kill as many cane toads as possible.
talk to 'em! you speak shellfish! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHoprNCyl7o
Male lobsters are cocks. And female lobsters are hens. But people generally just call them delicious.
Do not Google "lobster cock."
@applestoapples: WHY WOULD SOMEONE DRAW THIS
@Too Much Internet You were warned.
@applestoapples Thanks, adding that to the list right after "mucous plug"
@Too Much Internet The answer lies within your name! People were given too much internet and it's like a Pandora's Box of lobster cocks and furries and Voldemort slash fiction.
My hubby, being from the East Coast, is a lobster expert. The one thing he told me about lobsters that's stuck with me is when you're cooking them, the easiest way to know they're done is to pull on the antennae. If it comes right off, its done! If you've got to pull on it a couple of times, it needs to cook a few more minutes.
@ReginaSavage: If you pull on it and the lobster tells you to stop, please contact the CDC and turn off the burner.
When I was like 14 and making an email address I read a thing that was like "don't use your real name on the Internet if you are a child, especially a girl child" so I used my initials and the thing I was into at the moment, becoming ajlobster@hotmail.com. (I just thought they were cool, I guess? And my dad lived in Boston?)
That decision has stuck with me forever. I am now the woman who collects Things With Lobsters on Them.
Who you callin' an idiot.
For all of those independently wealthy folk out there – be aware, when you're jetpooling to ME for your kids' camp, there is still a law on the books* that stipulates you can't serve lobster to household help more than three times a week.
*I think. It's something like this.
I had never tried a lobster until I was 28, in Maine for a trip. They caught it fresh off the boat for me, steamed it, and served it with butter. Honestly I wasn't that impressed, it's just a big shrimp: kinda bland, funky texture. I do love lobster eggrolls though (I know, I know)
@Jengraf_80 I ate lobster for the first time in Maine a couple years ago, and I must say, I was kind of horrified by the whole process of dismembering them. They take a lot of work to eat! And the flavor is nice but not *that* nice.
@elysian fields It sounds like neither of you had enough butter or enough beer to go with your lobster.
@Jengraf_80 This was pretty much my experience as well, except that the lobster was delicious and tasted 100000000x better than shrimp. And I like shrimp.
Lobsters mate for LIFE!
@Shanley McClure@twitter I always thought this, too, but it's not true. They do have a nice mating ritual, though: http://www.melobster.com/lobster-faq.shtml
@Lola – Phoebe would not lie! Or be wrong….
@Shanley McClure@twitter I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought of Phoebe.
@Shanley McClure@twitter: God the sounds EXhausting. When do they eat?
@likethestore See! He's her lobster
Lobsters, I know, right?! They are the weirdest. When I was transitioning from being a vegetarian to being a meat eater I made my husband (then boyfriend) kill the lobster in as humane a way as possible which, according to google, was to stab them in the brain with a giant knife and then basically push the knife down to split its lobster face in twain. He was very nice and did this terrifying thing for me like 6 times. Horrifying! Don't do it, it's so scary. You're killing an animal, just kill it and eat it already, you know? Throw it in the pot.
@Emily Kaye It's terrible, isn't it? I worked for ten years in a seafood restaurant where I watched this happen dozens of time every shift, and I guess it's better than being boiled or steamed alive? The chef told me he thought lobsters' nervous systems aren't complex enough to feel pain the way we think of it, but I don't know…
@Emily Kaye: This is how I prepped a lobster once. It's a little disconcerting when you start, because you have to keep putting more and more force behind the knife to puncture the carapace for what feels like forever. Then it bursts through, and you kind of saw your way down through the thorax.
@Emily Kaye DFW says that the stabbing them in the head thing doesn't make any difference because of I forget why. Consider the Lobster!
@theharpoon Consider my butt.
@theharpoon Decentralized nervous system? Just guessing…
_ribstbbq_-related lobster fact: One Halloween I dressed up in a cardboard and construction paper lobster costume and won my class's costume contest. Having a mother who doubled as a first grade teacher sure came in handy when it was time to put together a Halloween costume. Or a project for the science fair.
Is there lobster-flavored Qream yet?
@sorry your heinous This comment is offensive.
@boyofdestiny I agree
My older sister's rehearsal dinner was a clambake on the beach in Connecticut. My finicky 14 year old self was super freaked out by the mesh bag of steamed sea animals set before me for dinner. My dad helped out by breaking the lobster open and spraying me with green lobster stomach stuff. Nope, no thanks, someone else can cook and chop up the lobster and put it in my food.
@Katie Walsh: I have trouble trusting others to cut it up and put it my food – they probably put some of that green crap in there, or (worse?) didn't take the poopy part out of the tail.
I ignore these things when I eat lobster bisque.
So let me tell you about the time a month ago when my idiot uncle came up from Kentucky to visit my grandparents/his parents, and, on a trip to the seafood market, bought himself a FOUR POUND LOBSTER for dinner. The thing was gigantic, claws larger than my hand, and felt like it weighed way more than 4 lbs.
Cut to time to cook dinner, and my uncle is already wasted, sitting on the back porch, because cooking is women's work. So my mother and I are in the kitchen, and she has filled the biggest pot in the house with water, and it is boiling. The "4 lb" lobster is too heavy for my mother to pick up single-handedly and drop in the pot, so I have to kill this noble beast, which, if the internet is truthful, has lived for 40 years. The pot is BARELY big enough, and I wind up having to pour a bunch more water in there so the poor lobster is covered.
I had salad for dinner that night.
@cherrispryte I can't eat the big ones, it seems to disrepectful to eat something that's my elder.
Big lobsters are generally chewier and less flavorful. The sweet spot in terms of weight is between 1.25 and 1.75 lbs. More than about 2lbs and you're paying way more per pound (because of scarcity) for meat that's lower quality. Of course, 4lbs. is the perfect size for drunken uncles to buy and forget about.
@riotnrrd Isn't this correct for a lot foods? (Larger = chewier and less flavorful). I feel like it is for seafood and most fruits & vegetables. Anyway.
@riotnrrd no, I know! The one or two times a year (if at that!) that I have a lobster, it's usually a 1.25 or a 1.5. My uncle is, on many levels, an idiot. (Also the claws were too hard for him to crack. Loser.
@riotnrrd: Once, on vacation in Nantucket, my dad decided to save money and get a 5-pounder instead of 4 1.25-pounders. It wasn't much less expensive, much chewier and a giant pain in the ass to cook.
I maybe read this in Consider The Lobster or maybe at a 3D movie I saw about Dorothea Dix at the Newseum BUTTTTTTT back in the Victorian age in England, the government mandated that mental institutions and prisons could only serve lobster to their patients/inmates once a week because, as it is the cockroach of the sea, it was considered cruel and unusual. It was considered equivalent to making inmates eat rats. Now it's so so so so fancy!
@Claire Carusillo Yes, same thing with the Maine law re: household help. People thought they were gross.
@Claire Carusillo Yeah, it was totally poor people food over here for a long time too. It seems to have been that way with all the funky looking sea creatures, I read somewhere that urchins were called whore's eggs in New England back in the day.
But they were gross because they cooked them dead! Like crawfish.
@Ophelia reminds me of the scene in mystic pizza when julia roberts is looking through the fridge. lobster, lobster, lobster…
When lobsters are stuck in those tanks at Chinese restaurants they spend the rest of their lives harshly judging the sartorial choices of diners. Lobsters would pinch the shit out of Chloe Sevigny if given the option.
@parallel-lines I would totally pinch the shit of Chloe Sevigny if I had claws.
@Ophelia OUT of. Yikes. That certainly wasn't what I meant.
@Ophelia Do you type with your giant claws or do you use those tiny little pinchy ones as well?
Welp, looks like the next installment of Qooking with Qream will be Lobster Qream Sauce. (Sorry.)(Barf.)(Oxyetc.)
@Jolie Kerr: What about Lobster Bisq?
http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster
Fun fact: the high pitched "scream" that people say they can hear from a lobster when it is in pain is not a scream at all, it is the air being forced out of the shells when it steams…guilt free lobster eating!
@bandgmeg You don't feel guilty about killing an animal in perhaps the most painful way possible? Just because it's not screaming doesn't mean it doesn't feel pain. It is so so much more humane to put the poor thing in the freezer first – this shuts down its nervous system slowly, and cold does not hurt them.
@nadsat The "guilt free" was a bit tongue in cheek, I didn't suggest that just because there wasn't screaming that there wasn't pain, but many people, when they feel squeamish about cooking lobster it is because "you can hear them scream" which is not true. Additionally, freezing long enough to kill a lobster creates ice crystals under the shell and ruins the quality of the meat. If you use a large enough pot of boiling water that the temperature doesn't drop significantly when the lobster is added, they die pretty much instantly.
Blue crabs are better. Sure lobsters are bigger.. but… yeah!
/mid-atlantic pride, for real!
Lobsters are white. Lobsters love apples. And so on.
Speaking of lobsters crawling on the floor, a few years ago I saw a short French film where a woman buys two or three fresh lobsters to cook for dinner. She can't work up the nerve to put one of the lobsters in the pot, and while she's doing this one escapes into the house. She ends up finding it and sweeping it up into a dustpan, and there's a scene of her sitting on a love seat with her head in her hands and the lobster sitting on the other side of the loveseat in a dustpan.
I can't remember the entire plot, but as time goes on she loses more control of the lobsters and becomes more exasperated that she can't just throw them in a pot of boiling water. I believe one of the lobsters ends up in the bathtub where there's a few inches of water, so she throws a hair dryer into it and electrocutes it. I believe the other ends up going down the garbage disposal, but I can't remember. But essentially the lobsters end up dying more horrific deaths than boiling water.
I've tried looking for this film for ages but I can't find it. But it was one of the most hilarious films I've ever seen because I know if I ever had to cook live lobsters I would pretty much end up freaking out and doing the same things the woman did.
@sarahf Yes! I think this is called "In the Kitchen" or something. Kitchen something. I think the final ones goes in a blender?
@Edith Zimmerman Yes! Kitchen.
@Edith Zimmerman YES! That's it! Thank you so much! And yes, it's the blender, not the garbage disposal. Something something whirling metal blades.
"What's this green stuff?"
- Matt Damon's character in Mystic Pizza.
@Lily Rowan yes! i just posted about mystic pizza above! love that movie.
@becky@twitter – Woot!
Also, I'm not that big on lobster, but I'm willing to eat a lobster roll now (as a child, they gave me tuna).
Also also, always make them race across the kitchen floor to the pot before cooking them.
I'm sure I have more, but I'll leave it there.
@Lily Rowan the buttery, grilled buns make lobster rolls super yum. now i'm at work and craving lobster rolls and a blue moon.
@becky@twitter A buttery, grilled bun would definitely help! But I only eat them on family occasions, and we don't grill the buns at home (diet lobster roll).
@Lily Rowan get thee to james hook.
@becky@twitter: Had a lobster roll today for lunch – yum! It was at the Hyatt at MIT (business meeting) and not James Hook, but I'll take what I can get.
@Bittersweet i love lobster. i'm leaving my office in back bay now, and might stop by a kelly's on the way home to get a lobster roll for din din.
Driving through New England during lobster season, the McLobster Roll is not so terrible. It is best eaten in your automobile, preferably going North on Route 93.
Has no one posted this video yet?! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWbcmzpG9sY
@katerrific OH MY GOD that is adorable. "WOW!"
FACT: boy lobsters have two ding-dongs.
@closetalker11 Increases the chances that at least one of them will be perfect penis.
my cousin, a formally trained chef, says what you do is put an entire melted stick of butter inside of a large ziplock bag, and throw your freshly steamed, de-shelled lobster inside of it, and seal it without air. in about 2 minutes, your lobster will soak up the entire stick of butter, causing a heartgasm.
I don't know if anyone's heard of her, but there's a delightful little old Italian cook named Lydia who has (had?) her own show, and one episode was on cooking lobster, and according to her, the kindest/fastest way to kill them is to STAB THEM THROUGH THE HEAD WITH A BUTCHER KNIFE. AND SHE DID JUST THAT. AND THEN RIPPED IT IN HALF.
@cosmia lidia's italy on pbs? LOVE HER!
@becky@twitter YES! oh my god I want her to be my grandmother and cook for me and take me on adventures in Italy and show me where to get all the good honey and cheese
@cosmia me too! only, i don't like it when she yells at her son (the wine guy). she can be kinda mean. i love it when her mom (MAMA!) is on the show cooking with her. she has several cookbooks and i think she has a restaurant somewhere in new york.
His aunt was in the garden, tending whatever flowers die at that time of year. She embraced him and together they went down into the bowels of the earth, into the kitchen in the basement. She took the parcel and undid it and abruptly the lobster was on the table, on the oilcloth, discovered.
“They assured me it was fresh” said Belacqua.
Suddenly he saw the creature move, this neuter creature. Definitely it changed its position. His hand flew to his mouth.
“Christ!” he said “it's alive.”
His aunt looked at the lobster. It moved again. It made a faint nervous act of life on the oilcloth. They stood above it, looking down on it, exposed cruciform on the oilcloth. It shuddered again. Belacqua felt he would be sick.
“My God” he whined “it's alive, what'll we do?” The aunt simply had to laugh. She bustled off to the pantry to fetch her smart apron, leaving him goggling down at the lobster, and came back with it on and her sleeves rolled up, all business.
“Well” she said “it is to be hoped so, indeed.”
“All this time” muttered Belacqua. Then, suddenly aware of her hideous equipment: “What are you going to do?” he cried.
“Boil the beast” she said, “what else?”
“But it's not dead” protested Belacqua “you can't boil it like that.”
She looked at him in astonishment. Had he taken leave of his senses?
“Have sense” she said sharply, “lobsters are always boiled alive. They must be.” She caught up the lobster and laid it on its back. It trembled. “They feel nothing” she said.
In the depths of the sea it had crept into the cruel pot. For hours, in the midst of its enemies, it had breathed secretly. It had survived the Frenchwoman's cat and his witless clutch. Now it was going alive into scalding water. It had to. Take into the air my quiet breath.
Belacqua looked at the old parchment of her face, grey in the dim kitchen.
“You make a fuss” she said angrily “and upset me and then lash into it for your dinner.”
She lifted the lobster clear of the table. It had about thirty seconds to live.
Well, thought Belacqua, it's a quick death, God help us all.
It is not.
–Samuel Beckett, "Dante and the Lobster"
@atipofthehat Gosh. That is gorgeous. I think you just made me go buy a book after work.
"Take into the air my quiet breath." WOW.
@atipofthehat Also, I kind of love that you typed all that out.
@jenergy Agreed! Thank you for posting that, atipofthehat.
@jenergy
Thank you–glad you liked it!
My favorite, favorite Beckett is the short play Krapp's Last Tape. (To read OR to see performed.)
@jenergy
The book is More Pricks than Kicks.
Sorry, I don't know anything about lobsters. Sadly, though, I know far too much about crabs…
Lobster is delicious halved and grilled. Mm.
@E The most delicious lobster I ever had was split and grilled with butter and lots of herbs. It was at a trendy restaurant with my in-laws and our waiter was really rude to me and they were smoking at the table and making fun of my husband and it was generally awful except for my lobster. I closed myself off from everything and just thoroughly relished that meal. When I emerged my MIL was griping about me ordering the expensive thing. Totally worth it.
I'm late to the Lobster Fact Party, but my fact is that lobsters are cannibals, at least when they're in captivity and under stress. Look closely at grocery lobster tanks! Sometimes interesting/disgusting stuff is happening.
Anything's a cannibal if you leave it in a tank long enough.
@melis or a studio apartment.
All I can think of is the This Kills the Crab meme. On the other hand, crab is delicious and I love that you can buy Dungeness crabs already dead so I can continue my morally-ignorant trend of eating wonderful seafood.
Or, I would if I COULD FIND ANY CRABS AROUND TOWN. Buhhhhh.