Andrew Zimmern Cooks: Lobster Rolls

it's getting hot in here because i have cord we all boiling because we were making lobster rolls today from scratch welcome to easy cook's instagram live edition and it is getting hot in here it's summertime i mean come on who doesn't want to be lounging around somewhere the gentle breeze blowing on them feeling just a little bit of sunburn from a day at the beach and chowing down on a beautiful beautiful lobster roll we are going to get to that we're going to answer your questions we're going to get to more conversation uh some other things that are coming up this weekend like the emmys on sunday congratulations to intuitive content uh our production company was nominated for two emmys uh one for uh best uh travel show uh for zimmer list and uh i was nominated for best host so we're really really excited good luck to all of the people they divided the the daytime enemies up into like 100 different uh nights this year uh but you can't just google it i think it's daytime emmys.tv or some such thing we'll post it in my uh social later on so people who want to watch uh can do so i know the emmys people would be thrilled you'll see lots of your favorite uh stars i'm actually there are presenters i'm gonna present three awards uh this year so it's gonna be a lot of fun um some unfinished business from last week uh four lies and the truth three lies in the truth total of four uh so a lot of people guessed wrong um the uh i was a child star in new york at the white opera of manhattan the gilbert sullivan repertory uh company uh i do collect 19th century maps and historical prints i do collect uh guitars and have some pretty cool ones in my collection including one of paul mccartney's and one of walter becker the late guitarist from steely dan who's uh one of my favorite guitar players um and while i have played uh in some poker and blackjack tournaments and while i love to play cards and i love vegas and i love going to the casino a couple times a year and i play cards with my friends i am not a uh have never played in a professional tournament that was a complete and total lie so if you guessed that you guessed uh correctly um let me get my lobster this is a live lobster um one and a quarter to one and a half pounds omarus americanus uh this is what is typically referred to as the main lobster um it is a beauty now uh lobsters have been enjoying a little bit of a renaissance over the last uh seven or eight years uh we've seen incredible seasons um and now of course uh the basically the entire seafood industry uh in america is shut down why 75 percent a little bit more than that but 75 is a good number 75 of all the seafood that comes to america take it out of waters you know aquaculture and wild what we take in and what we import is consumed in restaurants and a couple other places outside the home which means that while we love our seafood because we're the fifth largest importer in the world of seafood uh we don't consume as much of it as we should for for our health for our well-being and while uh 15 years ago lobster was very expensive relative to other things that come out of the ocean right now there are tremendous deals on lobster and the deals are even steeper right now um i've ordered lobster from a couple of different seafood companies on the east coast once you get up above i think 50 or 75 dollars in your uh in your checkout cart uh shipping is free it's overnight uh lobsters bass blue fish mussels clams waste everything from the east you know you name it it's at a reduced price so uh please go and google places and order seafood from the place that you feel good about doing it uh from and i don't need to leave west coast seafood people out of the picture too same thing on the west coast um from spot prongs to dungeness crabs to you know halibut you name it what comes out of the west coast absolutely phenomenal and should be supporting them uh as well now first thing that i want to do is i want to get my lobster cooking i have carrot celery onion white wine and peppercorns in my water uh i've been boiling it for a while so that the flavors all come out of there so i have a really nice uh cord wheel going um some people like to put the lobster right into the pot other people i am one of them uh sometimes we'll place a lobster in the freezer for 15 minutes goes right to sleep doesn't freeze the meat or the shell and you can place it right in there lobster doesn't know what's going on uh other people prefer to place a sharp knife about a half inch back uh from the eyes at the top of the carapace and just simply insert that knife straight in and the lobster is dispatched now one of the issues with that methodology is that it's not for people who are freaked out uh by the legs moving and stuff like that because while the lobster is you know an ex-lobster at that point um the the legs of the tail will sometimes kick around because its electrical system is still engaged and that disturbs people if you do not like that but you want to cook lobster just stick it in the freezer for 15-20 minutes um works really really well anyway this lobster is now going to cook in this really really sturdy cord wheel i mean i can smell the carrots and the celery and the onion and the peppercorns and the white and the white wine it's beautiful we're going to just turn this up a little bit because i put a big you know pound and a half sized uh cold thing into a half gallon of boiling water uh but you can see because i had it boiling for a while before the thermal momentum is still up so that lobster is cooking right now it's another reason why you want to make sure that your water is at a nice raging boil uh when that happens so anyway lobster is in there cooking cook it for eight nine ten minutes depending on how big it is i'll show you when it comes out another sign to tell when it's done uh if some of the liquids in the lobster come out at the space where the tail meets the top of the carapace the upper shell uh you will sometimes see some uh collecting of white coagulated juices from the lobster and that's another indication that the temperature inside is sufficient enough to cook it uh next thing that we want to do is want to toast our buns um so one thing that is easy to find back home where i'm from on the east coast and is impossible to find uh here in minnesota are a proper east coast hot dog and other sausage buns that have a nice flat side to them so what i do is i just feather a knife serrated please across the end of it and just take that off and the reason is i want to get a super nice toasty buttery really nice toasty buttery grilled cheese bread texture right for those of you that don't cook a lot that's always what people tell me when i describe it and then they look and they go oh like a grilled cheese so i'm like yeah so all we're going to do is we're just going to toast these for a couple minutes on each side so they get a nice crispy crunchy exterior that's buttery and the roll gets warm now there's two ways uh to really make a lobster roll uh well you can make it a thousand ways you want to add celery carrot onion salt pepper a little curry powder vadovan french vadivan curry makes a delicious lobster it's more like putting a flavored lobster salad into a roll if you want to make a what is conventionally referred to as a new england or maine style lobster roll there's only two ways to do it one you pull the meat from the lobster you let it cool to just about warm you stuff it in the bun and it has to be the the chopped meat from an entire lobster and then you pour two or three tablespoons of hot salted butter on top of it that's one way okay uh who does that phenomenal reds in wiscasset makes a phenomenal lobster roll that way uh world class one of the top five easily um five islands lobster company days two other places in maine that i love my father used to live in maine uh so the last eight ten years of his life and so i would go up there all the time and i feel like maine even though i'm a new york minnesota person my third home has been and always will be in the state of maine uh so to everyone down east love you uh so one of the things that i want to do is um tell you about the other way that these lobster rolls get made which is right butter hot butter reds and whisk acid a little bit of mayonnaise period maybe some salt and pepper right a teaspoon of celery or minced onion i mean just the barest amount just to pull out the flavor in the mayonnaise and accentuate what goes on the lobster and by the way there should be no mayonnaise if you took all of the lobster salad that you make with the mayonnaise out of the bun you shouldn't see any pooling up anywhere just enough to gloss it super super super important so yeah they're asking how long does a lobster cook for well that depends on how many are in the pot how quickly it came back to a boil and the size of the lobster i'm doing a single uh lobster it's between one and a quarter and one and a half pounds that's the size we ordered and it came over to the shop um so that'll take between eight and ten minutes the safest thing to do with all lobsters and i and i tell people this all the time uh whether you're boiling or whether you're steaming them make sure they're in a single layer in the pot or in the pan another great way to do it in a roasting pan with aluminum foil across the top inch and a half of boiling water and throw it in for 25 minutes in a 350 degree oven it basically steams and boils in there but let it go for 8 or 10 minutes then just turn off the heat and let it sit in there like a tea bag for four or five more minutes so that heat penetrates the shell because one thing about lobster is that i can't have you take it out of the fridge and tell you to have it come to room temperature like a steak right or even shrimp right or chicken so that it's cooking right away so it always takes a while right and the interior of that lobster is uh 34 degrees because it's been the refrigerator uh for a couple of hours here so i want to look and see let me see if i have a my handy-dandy tongs available anywhere boy this is what i'm reduced to these days um okay so i can see here do you see that coagulant that little white stuff there when i start to see it that white coagulant come out here i know that the inside of that lobster is cooked 100 so i'm just gonna let that go for another minute or two right um but yeah the the tea bag methodology is foolproof because you're allowing it to come to a temperature where you know it's cooked or almost cooked and then it sits in the water it's not gonna get waterlogged the meat itself is already cooked you just do that for four or five minutes then let it rest room temperature dry out a little you're gonna be absolutely fine um question you're getting a lot of hellos from brazil greece and dominican republic matthew jennings wants you to know that he's watching matthew jennings i dated him in high school uh chef matt jennings uh now living in vermont with his lovely family and his incredibly talented wife uh kate and as i always like to remind people whenever the subject of matt jennings comes up this is one of the most awarded and highly regarded culinarians in the country he's not even the best cook in his own house that title would belong to his wife kate who is got serious chops but doesn't feel the need to tell everyone about it can you i can't i kid him because he's one of my best friends continue can you overcook a lobster yes you can overcook anything especially in water you know it's a great question many people think that like because pot roast is cooked in you know braised or whatever brisket or lobster is boiled or steamed that you can't overcook it oh my god it is one of the easiest things to overcook how many times have you had a pot roast or brisket that's just like dry and you can barely chew through it the same thing with lobster matt says you love kate more than he does it's not that's not that's not true that that woman i know don't make me embarrass you because you've told me how much you love your wife do not there's there's like 50 000 people watching and another million will see this over the next week do you really want to have that conversation now my friend because i'll have it i'll have it no one loves your wife more than you do and as it should be although there are legions of us who are big fans of hers okay now literally in the last 60 seconds you could start to see some of the coagulants come out of the lobster and i am just going to plunge this right now into a bowl of icing water and i'm going to turn off the heat on one of my shells came off let's put that now why do i do this well first of all if i have the time i would do my boiling and resting the day beforehand put the lobsters in a plastic bag once they're room temperature in the refrigerator let them chill and then go through my whole cracking process to extract the meat but i'm going to show you how to do it now and kind of like uh dealing with a roast turkey or a roast chicken if i start doing it right away when it comes out of the oven the outside of it is so hot that i'm gonna do all that sort of like owie owie thing on tv and i really don't want to do that um the whole point of this is we're gonna show you how to do it so you know two minutes in there while i get a plate for our lobster rolls and uh it'll be cooled sufficiently for me to hold the shell and extract the meat right so let me get a plate give me one sec okay so i will say uh i will say one thing where's the oh yeah there we go just prop those open a little bit okay um next thing that we want to do they're asking if the water was seasoned it was with white wine peppercorns celery carrot and onion as a matter of fact we call that in the biz accord we all once it's all thrown together but there's all of that delicious veg now you can taste the white wine and all those vegetables and peppercorns in the lobster meat if you have a lobster that you just steam in plain water versus one that you maybe poach in a cord wheel you are going to taste that that corbin in the lobster meat guaranteed um now i'm going to prop this up out of the ice into this bowl and let that just sort of drain there for a second while i make my uh little salad here um now i happen to be a huge lover of celery anyone who's watched episodes of a.z cooked or any of my cooking classes or looked at recipes online and i love the leaves i just love the crunchy flavor of celery and it's really strong flavor as well and i just put about a third of a cup in there i put a squeeze and i mean it was like a quarter maybe a teaspoon teaspoon of lemon juice i am going to put and to my father this was sacrilege my father would do it with just the celery i have found in my home that just a little bit of minced onion like a tablespoon or so sometimes i'll do a shallot if i don't want to do a whole onion but i'm gonna be cooking later on so it's okay if i mince up an onion because i'm just looking for a super fine healthy tablespoon of onion now we are making lobster salads with a little bit of salt in there and most importantly because nothing goes better with mayonnaise and shellfish than black pepper i just love the flavor of mayonnaise black pepper and shellfish in fact there's a hot mayonnaise and black pepper sauce for shrimp that comes off the grill that i am absolutely nuts about maybe we should do that in a couple of weeks here um all right so first thing that we want to do take our claws off next thing that we went the reason we want those off is that we don't like cut ourselves or nick ourselves on the show because our next move is going to be to separate the tail from the head and we just do that by gently twisting oh a beautiful female lobster with row and look at this see this is this is why i should have rested the meat is perfectly cooked but the lobster coral would be red but it's not it's black but that's fine because what i'm going to do is i'm going to save that what happens if you unshell it and then it's undercooked oh if it's under you can just throw it into a warm oven you know steam it for another minute or two don't microwave it put in a 250 degree oven for five seven uh minutes this is really a very very simple issue uh can you grab me a uh bowl well actually i don't need one i've got a big one right here i'm gonna save the uh the row so you can crack this with your hands um there's videos on our website of me doing that the the problem with cracking it with your hands is that you can't withdraw the tail as elegantly as if you cut it and because it has that beautiful piece of row attached to and i want to save some of those juices i also save my shells by the way very very important because the shell allows me to make sauces and soups with it even when it's cooked and i'm just cutting through into this tail so i could slide the egg out and there it's half cooked half raw so you can see i actually you want to know what the stupid move was and matt will back me up on this the stupid move because the lobster meat is cooked because i should have looked to see if it was a male or female if i saw it was a female i would let go for an extra 60 or 90 seconds um and the reason being is that you're going to have roe in a female it's just going to take a little extra time to cook so all i'm gonna do is dice this lobster meat by the way if you love the people that you are feeding you will dice this and you will do a good job cutting it up why because there's nothing worse than biting into a lobster roll and this long piece of lobster comes up that's how you show people that you do not care for them i want to show people that i do care for them uh take off the small piece of the small claw let that liquid get out there flatten the knife crack it down this is you know small lobsters have thin uh shells are you gonna keep your cordrill for later for soups or something you know we were talking about that earlier um when i have room i have a chest freezer at home and yes when i cook lobsters in it i would because after i do three four five six if i was doing lobsters for a party that becomes something that i then i toast the shells and a little tomato paste add a little bit more wine or brandy and dump this in instead of water to make my lobster stock because it's so so lobstery so the answer is yes we just have to have the space in your freezer for it it's like reusing oil when you're frying it's smart to do now this this larger shell right is thicker but it's the same thing place it down there and just give it a good push then you can take the entirety of it and in the larger shell there is a feathery bone that comes out from the center when you pull from between the claws right if you try to pull it the other way it will not come out why because you're holding on to this part and you can see it's got these little feathers on the side and you can't pull it back that way um super easy the knuckles are not going into my lobster salad uh for my lobster rolls and the reason is is that i am going to eat those labels what do you do with the shells i put them in a bag in my freezer along with all my shrimp shells and other bits of crab shells things like that and when i have four or five pounds of them i caramelize them in tomato paste add more vegetables add seafood fish stock that i've already made or water or poaching liquid or steaming liquid from other lobster excursions i make a really rich uh shellfish stock and then i use that for risottos and soups and things like that uh all right mayonnaise for something this big one heaping spoonful and combine the crunch of this look everyone has their way of doing this is how i make it in my home which is different than my three favorite places to get them in maine but that's why i go to those places i i specifically don't do the butter oh i should say in the city of uh portland is a restaurant called evan tide one of my favorite restaurants in america and at evan tide they serve their lobster rolls small in a uh steamed uh chinese bun uh that they make themselves from scratch and they cook the lobster in brown butter and then pour brown butter over the top period which is a nice uh twist to it and for i know there's people uh watching who have uh dined at evan tide is that your most memorable rest like restaurant where you had a lobster roll no i mean my i i have to say i'm i'm really lucky you know i grew up on the east coast um there was a place growing up on montauk highway called lunch the lobster roll that was its name i had a big sign that said lunch um back in the 60s uh my uh my mom and her friend ellen would take myself we were very young and ellen's son david and his sister elizabeth to launch the lobster in the middle of the week while the dads were working in new york they'd come out on the train on fridays and that would be um a regular place for me and i don't consider it to be the best lobster roll that i've ever had uh and certainly these days it's more of a commercial spot uh they still have a good lobster roll uh but it is not the the quality there it's the memory and the feeling of those days so there you have it simple easy make it however you want it but i'm telling you right now this baby right here is a really nice lobster roll uh questions comments criticisms we have a couple of minutes do you prefer cold or hot lobster roll both this is this is a true story by the way i will eat multiple lobster rolls a day when i'm in maine um i will drive up to reds in wiscasset i will eat a lobster roll a couple of little goodies shop around the town maybe do some things on the way back stop at a swimming hole stop in a little harbor jump off the end of a dock cool off and then have stopped at five islands or days on the way back into portland have a lobster roll steamers corn just to put the whole feed bag on one more time could you do this recipe with shrimp matt says he approves here's the deal when you're up in maine near any of the coastal communities from boston north every crab shack lobster shack clam shack that you stop at has a lobster roll a clam roll a crab brothers you can do this with crab meat you can do this with shrimp you know with leftover salmon comes off the grill it's a great way to make a little quick sandwich there is something about a lobster roll that is just elegant and decadent and just hits all the right buttons what's your favorite side dish for this chips fries cheese curds not cheese curds um well i mean you you're you're in new england so uh fries or potato chips would be apropoe um however my favorite side dish to uh a pair of small lobster rolls or a big lobster roll is a two pound bag of steamers and a half cup of drawn butter what are the best summer dishes that's not too broad or roomy a question but i do have a good answer for you if you go to andrew zimmern.com we have holiday recipes summer desserts summer recipes barbecue and grilling tips for summer we have so much in the summer category keep you busy for the rest of the warm weather months how often should you sharpen your knives well i hone my knives um every time i'm done using them so well this is so dirty um but uh if i'm when we finish today i will draw my knife 15 20 times on each side on the steel and i'll usually do that before i get started and the reason is that puts a nice uh it hones it sharpening is something that you do every couple months if you use them a lot i sharpen my own knives on a grinding stone if i have a nick or a ding i send it out uh to there's a handful of great places around the country that you can mail it to if you have like some sort of expensive custom-made knife that has to be dealt with by an expert you got to send it out if you have a commercially available knife oftentimes the butcher shop or even the butcher counter at your local supermarket has a service where you drop them off and a couple days later you pick them up but it's important that's when you need to put a new edge on it right either do it yourself on a stone or send it in they're saying are there any spices you can add to this recipe oh at the top i mentioned curry to me any kind of seafood salad shrimp crab lobster you want to add you want to take it in a whole different direction curry curry curry curry every time and french vatavan curry it's a beautiful pale green it's a stunning stunning uh choice favorite 90s song favorite 90s song hard for me to remember that decade um i don't remember the 80s but i remember a lot of talking heads albums and clash albums that came out in the 80s that really got me going 90s what came out of the 90s what was that duran duran's decade hard for me to remember do you approve of old-based seasoning for this wow the controversial question gets asked um if you're out on the eastern shore in maryland everything gets hit with old bay either in the water or sashay or seasoned afterwards or put in the mayonnaise or sandwich if you were down in cajun country uh and really now cajun country has expanded i mean it's now not just central louisiana i mean it is down to new orleans it is all the way down into houston texas and all the way across into uh uh alabama and mississippi and through the florida panhandle everyone loves cajun food and so you will get uh saturn's most famous brand crab boil shrimp boil seafood boil in everything both of those things take your seafood into a flavor direction that it can't pull away from it's delicious i love it there are tons of recipes that i make all the time when i'm doing a big shrimp boil with sausage and potatoes and corn at the end of the summer when i'm doing a crawfish boil or something it has to have those flavors when i'm doing uh hard shell blue crabs uh for friends and we're hammering them at the picnic table of course i throw old bay in but not for this doesn't mean it's not delicious uh we are out of time i cannot wait uh to speak with you oh next week uh i will uh not be here um we are taking the week off for uh a holiday we will be back the following thursday with a.z cooks live on instagram and youtube um vicky why don't we post a classic easy cooks recipe video next thursday we'll find a classic from the archives we have hundreds of them and we'll put that out next thursday so those of you have a desire to see something that's summary we'll put that out for you stay close to my social we'll put out info about the emmy awards on sunday night is there anything that i am forgetting i think that's it thank you everyone have a great rest of your day

Channel: Andrew Zimmern

Views: 90,059

Keywords: andrew, zimmern, Cooking, Culinary, Literacy, Kitchen, instructions, How, to, Yum, delicious, favorite, eating, meal, Travel, Channel, family, azcooks

Id: vd23nbX5IM8

Length: 36min 6sec (2166 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020