Lobster Tempura Sushi

every summer my brothers and i get a really fun recreational license for lobster we don't catch very many on purpose of course just to not mess with the lobstermen who do this for a living but we really enjoy the ones that we do catch typically we eat them the plain old way steam them dip them in just a little bit of butter and they're delicious but i was thinking the other day and i realized there's one thing that i've never done with lobster that i really want to do sushi and when i think of sushi and lobster for one reason or another what comes to mind is tempura now i used to work at this restaurant where i had to do a tempura dish there was this really delicious crispy fish sandwich i dip it in this beautiful tempura batter and gently toss it in my frying oil ultimately assembling this really beautiful sandwich now i think if i can make a really delicate tempura batter dredge my lobster tail and perhaps some of that claw meat in there and then roll it into a sushi roll i think i'll have something amazing now as you can see i got my lobster normally you know me i'm like a seafood czar i get the freshest best ingredients ever but this time around i'll be honest i walked right up the road to a really basic market and grab one of the ones they had in the tank was also like 30 which is ridiculous now let's take this bad boy out of the bag you know what i'll say it this is not as bad as i thought it might be he's actually very lively but you know one thing that bothers me is when they put these green bands over their claws i think it's really unfair and i get that these are gonna claw each other to death in a cage if you leave them like that but the first thing i do when i get lobster is take these off this guy deserves some respect but i hope he doesn't claw me in the process but yeah you can see that this guy's pretty lively it's probably pretty hard to tell but this guy's about a two pounder and before we go ahead and make some beautiful sushi out of him i want to show you one trick that i've learned if you gently tilt the lobster up on his head like this and then slowly rub between his eyes he will fall right to sleep notice he's completely stopped moving this is the most unique thing that i know when it comes to lobsters and my brothers and i have been working with them for so many years that you get really comfortable with something like this and now i'm just gonna gently take my hands away and he'll be dead asleep it certainly is very interesting but it might actually be something nice to do before you go ahead and kill a lobster which i also like to do very humanely i think if the whole chef thing doesn't work out i might have to be a hypnotist i just want to quickly show you that he's totally fine and how quickly this lobster will wake up once i put him back down you ready now this lobster is totally fine it's like nothing ever happened he's back awake you can see his antennas are moving around he's moving again he's good and now without further ado let's go ahead and make our sushi to start out i am going to put him down by putting my knife right between the eyes it is the most humane way to kill a lobster and i'm not going to show that part on camera because i really don't like it and i don't want to sensationalize that kind of thing but to do it properly you'll fit the knife just behind the eyes poke it in just a little bit so that you don't cut your finger off when you do it and then quickly crunch and in a split second your lobster will be dead he'll feel no pain now i have a towel here because oftentimes you get a lot of juice coming out of the lobster when you kill it so to me this is a really great way to catch all of that and make sure you don't make a huge mess in your kitchen so as you'll see here i have a towel under my lobster here when you put your knife through it to kill it a lot of juice and liquid will go around your kitchen this is a great way to make sure there's not a giant mess now i'll flip my lobster over and you may notice a little movement once in a while still those are just nerves after you've killed it and here's a great chef's trick i'll take a knife and feed it straight through the tail so that when we steam it my tail won't curl up it'll stay nice and straight just like this now i'll gently place my lobster in a pot of boiling water and i'm gonna cook this for just a few minutes basically par cooking it because when i go to deep fry my tempura it's gonna cook it the rest of the way through once this is cooked for just a few minutes i'll take off my lid then give this a really nice rinse with cold water that'll halt the cooking process and here's my beautiful lobster now first things first i'll rip the tail off you can see here we have roe which means this was a female lobster the other way to check for male or female is to look at these two flaps right at the top of the inside of the tail if they're smaller and flimsier like these are it's a girl and if they're harder and a bit thicker it's a boy now you should be able to tell that my meat isn't fully cooked and that's perfect i'll slide out my knife then crack through the whole shell with my chef's knife to take it out once i break this open and pull out my meat you'll be able to see that my meat is perfect i'll slice the rest of the way through this leaving me with two perfect pieces for tempura i'm also gonna crack off the claws whack then twist and i'll pull out my beautiful claw meat this to me is the best bite in a lobster it's tender it's delicious it's beautiful i'll do the same thing with my other claw this one came out perfectly the rest of this i'll save for a lobster stock i was planning on making lobster bisque anyway if you're interested in lobster stock cover all of this with water in a big pot and then just let it steam off it'll suck out all that flavor and once you strain it at the end you'll have a beautiful lobster stock to use for whatever you want for our tempura batter let's go two cups club soda one and two-thirds cup all-purpose flour one and a half cups of corn starch and just a little bit of salt now whisk this up until it's nice and well combined it's a very interesting mixture but that sparkling club soda really helps to make an amazing tempura batter and there's one other thing that'll take this up a notch making it ice cold so toss this in the fridge and let it get really really cold before you dip remove the lid to your fryer keeping in mind that you can fry in a heavy bottom pot if you need to now i'll dip my lobster meat very gently shake off all of that excess batter and then slowly sway this back and forth in my oil until i ultimately drop it in i'll do the same with the rest of my lobster going back and forth with it is a key step in making tempura you gotta ease it into the oil and same thing again with my lobster claws once this is all going i can go ahead and put the lid on and let it go till it's golden brown now lift your lobster tempura out and let it settle for a minute i'll dump these onto a wire rack and i hope you can hear how crispy they are then i'll just hit them with a tad bit of salt while they have that little coating of oil to soak it up i just want to show you how crispy and yummy this tempura is i'm gonna be totally honest i underestimated how delicious this would be holy crap let's assemble all the other small parts to get ready for our sushi i'll cut my cucumber into nice thin strips and by the way if you're gonna buy cucumbers buy those nice small persian ones i'm persian so i might be a little bit biased but i can confidently tell you that the small cucumbers taste far better than those nasty giant cucumbers that come from big factories and taste like water once i've cut nice thin strips of my cucumber and make some nice sticky sushi rice we're ready to assemble we'll start by putting down our bamboo roller on top of this i'll add my nori seaweed now i'll wet my hands and gently press out my sushi rice make sure you just put a nice thin layer across all the seaweed i know it seems like i'm changing my mind all the time but let's keep the rice on the outside of this roll i'm going to sprinkle just a little bit of fire kake all across the top of my rice then in one swift motion i'm going to flip this right over onto my roller now it's time to build i'll start with a nice piece of my cucumber you don't have to but i like to leave some of the edge on then i'll take my beautiful lobster tempura and lay it across my sushi roll this here is the star of the show now i want a little bit of creaminess so i'm going to add a little bit of my japanese mayonnaise now last but not least i'll paint just a little bit of soy sauce all across my lobster and now i'll roll it up as always one little squeeze when we get to this point and then we roll it the rest of the way and give it a final squeeze to make sure it's all held together really well and here is our roll i want to make this very clear i am beyond excited about this tempura you know something like lobster it's hard to imagine that they can actually get that much better if you do stuff to it and i did stuff to it and it's amazing this gorgeous but very simple yet amazing piece of sushi is the star of our show today i'm really happy with how it came together i feel like the flavor will be really well balanced and i'm really curious to see how that lobster tempura will interact with those creamy flavors as well as the nori and rice i say we give it a try mwah you did great work today buddy everybody let's all thank larry the lobster who's gonna make a delicious stock later today as for the sushi here's what i'm getting pretty quickly i taste the tempura which gives that salty slightly toasted flavor coupled with that lobster meat which is really tender but obviously a bit chewier than regular fish that you'd have in sushi now the nori gives an awesome chewy texture throughout the end of your bite while the rice and japanese mayonnaise both give a generous amount of creaminess to the entire sushi roll all in all i'm a big fan of this and i'm going to be making lobster tempura again while there's certainly something to be said about having lobster by itself you can't deny the beauty behind this piece of tempura right here and the best part unlike a lot of food out there is that it's really easy to do just make sure that if you're gonna make it you only partly cook the lobster meat because you're gonna cook it again when you fry this bad boy right here this gets a high rating in my book please don't forget to like comment subscribe share whatever you want i hope you guys love these videos as much as i love making them and that's all i'm ever gonna ask of you our channel's growing so fast so thank you so much and i can't wait for next summer where i'm gonna catch my own lobster and show you that process then we'll be able to make quite a bit layer the lobster out

Channel: Nick DiGiovanni

Views: 3,156,433

Keywords: Nick DiGiovanni, Cooking, Food, Chef, Recipe, Gordon Ramsay, Kitchen, ASMR, MasterChef, Osmo Salt, Salt Bae, Learn To Cook, Knife Drop, Cookbook, Kid-Friendly, Kid’s Recipes, Kid’s Cooking

Id: LZ80HLxkgIM

Length: 8min 44sec (524 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021