How to Get the Meat out of a Boiled Lobster

hi this is Margo and I'm going to show you today how to get all the meat out of one of these love little critters a good old New England lobster okay for starters when they come out of the water out of the boiling water which I'm not going to show you they sometimes have a lot of water in them so it's very helpful to start taking them apart before you start trying to get the meat out and then emptying the water out so that doesn't end up on your plate so the first thing you want to do is you want to take the whole claws and just twist them so they come off like that right away just twist and they come right off okay then you want to take these parts and here you've got the the claw and the arm and you want to go against the joint like that to break them right off like that okay this probably won't have much water in it and then this part work the jaw a little bit to see how much water just came out that's good okay now let's do the other one just so you know this is the cutting claw right here and this one the bigger one is the crusher claw okay so we want to go against the joint here just like that and then do that see how much water comes out you don't want that water on your plate so find a place that you can dump it I mean I just put it in my regular tray okay now to take these apart basically just pull that against the joint and depending on the season and once you get rid of just get rid of all these things depending on the season you might get a hard shell or a soft shell these are sort of medium so let's take too much to break them if you need to break them if they're really really tough you might want to get out a hammer or you might want to get out a great big knife and give them a cut across the top but that way you can get the whole thing out all this white stuff here that's just that you don't need that okay let's do the other claw you just go against the joint and then check I'm still dripping check to see if maybe part of it is still in there okay so you might want to go here and this is about the only tool I'll use just a nut pick and just pull it out so you can get that little piece come on baby there we go nice piece of meat nice piece of meat and just start putting on your plate okay then this one will just break it again if you if you need to cut it with a big knife hit it about here see where this this is hit it right about there and then you can cut it and and it will crush just fine okay there we go I get this excess just fatty stuff you can get that off okay now these legs again they're very very sorry about it hit the tripod okay now these are really really sharp so you want to be kind of careful with those but again against the joint like that so you can pull it apart and then you can just stick your finger in usually one direction or the other and then you can get that whole joint of meat that whole joint of meat right there rid of that again break it stick your finger in or use your help little thing here to push just push pull it out and there you go get rid of this extra fat you don't need that one more piece do we have a claw in there no there's nothing in there that's probably still on the body let's try this one again against it and don't impale yourself on those little sharp pieces just push your finger in there take it right out really really easy push it in if it doesn't go out easily one direction try the other direction there you go there nice piece of meat beautiful piece of lobster meat okay now where are we there we go here's our here's our lobster that doesn't have any claws anymore you know you can get bargains sometimes on lobsters pistols and calls a call is a lobster that is missing one of its claws and a pistol is this a lobster with no claws and sometimes when they're in the the lobster cars a long time sometimes they fight and they lose a claw but the real meat of course is in this wonderful tail the way you get it off and yet I see people in these you know the lazy man's Lobster some of that and they cut it down there I mean that is just such a waste you just take it like this hold on to the lobster here hold on to it here and just twist back and forth a couple of times and it comes right apart it's really really easy again you're bending it against the joint put the body down and here we go we've got all sorts of things here we can take a look at if you want to know how to tell whether it's male female that's where you can do that if these first ones are kind of hard and stiff its male if if they're they're kind of floppy like this and feathery it's female you can also tell because there's some Roe in this one can you see that nice row right there on the green stuff yeah the green stuff everybody goes ick that's the tamale um yum let's just liver it's just fine you don't have to eat it but those of us that eat a lot of lobster end up eating a lot of it anyway we like it so now you've got this wonderful tail and how do you get all that meat out well you take the tail feathers and you just grab your hand just like this and again against the joint and just go right like that get rid of that and now you have a little piece of tail meat right here and the tail comes here and you just take your thumb stretch out stretch that out and just push in sometimes it takes a little bit you might have to go back and forth and again we're dripping a little bit so do it someplace that and push and look at that pops right out beautiful piece of meat now if you've got a female you might have some roe I'm going to clean out this yep I did eat it here we go we have the ROE and we're going to separate these two pieces of the tail just right down there and the red stuff right here the coral that's Roe that's good to eat here's some more of it and sometimes you'll see it a little bit black that's okay and then you have this nice long piece now occasionally you'll find some extra pieces of things in there that's what we call the like in shrimp they call it the vein but it's also really the digestive tract so you want to get that out so this strip is very nice I just separated that out and you go this one and then you find the digestive tract right here right down here and you pull that out and throw it out and you're all set and I would separate out these two halves of the tail and you got a lot of good meat right there that's that that's the best part of the meat okay now we still have the body now I know a lot of people just at this point just say I'm going to throw in the towel or they hand the body to my dad this is the way you get to the deal with the body now these are just chicken size lobsters that chicken lobster is about a pound and a quarter so they aren't really very big and I know a lot of people like to suck on the these little legs personally until you get to about two pound lobster you really can't fish out much meat from them so I don't deal with the legs but the body is very interesting put your thumb right down in the middle that yes right in the middle of all the green stuff and pull the top off there and you might even find a little more row in there might yeah there you go a little row throw that out okay still got part of the tail on that I don't need that okay so here I'm going to clean out the tamale here here I'll throw that out just to make you feel better okay when you've got that here's the inside you know here's the front here all the legs and then this part right here I want to put your two thumbs on either side of it and split it now the reason you want to do that is that at the where the joints come in for all these individual legs there's a nice hunk of meat look at that nice big hunk of meat so you can go in there once you split it and pull out that nice knuckle meat and you can get it on each of these each of these okay and remember I said that there was we lost one on the claw well there's a piece of it right there right there and here the legs are going to fall off don't worry about that but notice that you can see the you can feel it but this cartilage here is in between each of these knuckles and you want to just pull out a little bit of meat in between all of those little bits of cartilage you can feel it you can tell whether it's the meat or not that way and then just feel your way through it if it feels like the meat that's great there are some other things in there so some gills you'll find these little things they look sort of like they're feathery trying to look for them I guess maybe they're not quite in this one but just feel for feel for the meat right up there in the knuckles you find some other things in there if it doesn't feel like meat don't eat it go in here yeah there's another nice knuckle right there not a knuckle just feel it just feels different it isn't a knuckle and just go in and pick out all these things if you want to get your little little nut pick out there you might be able to find a little bit more but essentially just go through find those knuckles there it is there's another nice knuckle nice piece of meat right there another nice piece of meat right in there I think we've pretty much got it it might be a few more oh I meant there a couple months of the knuckles there can you just start taking it apart find that knuckle meat okay find the knuckle meat and then here remember we took off that claw and I said it's probably still on the body here's one there's a really nice big knuckle for the whole claw look look at that huge piece of meat we just pulled out of there that's nice and then use your user little nut pick a little bit pull out some more and there you go a nice nice plate of lobster meat from one chicken lobster Bon Appetit

Channel: Margo Burns

Views: 265,799

Rating: 4.6144977 out of 5

Keywords: lobster, how-to

Id: 3-jVjp4fFa0

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 18 2012