LOBSTER

AS WITH CLAMS AND MUSSELS, WE FOUND that shopping for lobster is just as important as cooking. Lobsters must be purchased alive. Choose lobsters that are active in the tank, avoiding listless specimens that may have been in the tank too long. Maine lobsters (which are actually found on the northeast coast from Canada to New Jersey), with their large claws, are meatier and sweeter than clawless rock or spiny lobsters. They are our first choice. Size is really a matter of preference and budget. We found it possible to cook large as well as small lobsters to perfection as long as we adjusted the cooking time (see Approximate Steaming Times and Meat Yields).

During our initial phase of testing, we confirmed our preference for steamed lobster rather than boiled. Steamed lobster did not taste better than boiled, but the process was simpler and neater, and the finished product was less watery when cracked open on the plate. Steaming the lobster on a rack or steamer basket kept it from becoming waterlogged. (If you happen to live near the ocean, seaweed makes a natural rack.) We found that additions to the pot—beer, wine, herbs, spices, or other seasonings—failed to improve the lobster's flavor. It seems that nothing can penetrate the hard lobster shell.

As for dry-heat cooking methods, we found the steady, even heat of the oven preferable to broiling, where charring of the meat is a real danger. We found that a high oven temperature of 450 degrees works the best. You want to cook the lobster quickly. When we roasted lobsters at lower temperatures, the outer layer of meat had dried out by the time the inside was cooked through. To keep the tail from curling during roasting, we found it helpful to run a skewer through it (see figure 22).

Although we had little trouble perfecting these two cooking methods, we were bothered by the toughness of some of the lobsters tails we were eating. No matter how we cooked them, most of the tails were at least slightly rubbery and chewy.

We spent six months talking to research scientists, chefs, seafood experts, lobstermen, and home cooks to see how they tackled the problem of the tough tail. The suggestions ranged from the bizarre (petting the lobster to "hypnotize" it and thus prevent an adrenaline rush at death that causes the tail to toughen, or using a chopstick to kill the lobster before cooking) to the sensible (avoiding really old, large lobsters). But after testing every one of these suggestions, we still didn't have a cooking method that consistently delivered a tender tail.

Occasionally, we would get a nice tender tail, but there did not seem to a pattern. We then spoke with several scientists who said we were barking up the wrong tree. The secret to tender lobster was not so much in the preparation and cooking as in the selection.

Before working on this topic in the test kitchen, the terms hard-shell and soft-shell lobster meant nothing to us. Unlike crabs, there's certainly no distinction between the two at the retail level. Of course, we knew from past experience that some lobster claws rip open as easily an aluminum flip-top can, while others require shop tools to crack. We also noticed the wimpy, limp claw meat of some lobsters and the full, packed meat of others. We attributed these differences to the length of time the lobsters had been stored in tanks. It seems we were wrong. These variations are caused by the particular stage of molting that the lobster is in at the time it is caught.

As it turns out, most of the lobsters we eat during the summer and fall are in some phase of molting. During the late spring, as waters begin to warm, lobsters start to form the new shell tissue underneath their old shells. As early as June off the shores of New Jersey and in July or August in colder Maine and Canadian waters, the lobsters shed their hard exterior shell. Because the most difficult task in molting is pulling the claw muscle through the old shell, the lobster dehydrates its claw (hence the smaller, wimpier claw meat).

Once the lobster molts, it emerges with nothing but a wrinkled, soft covering, much like that on a soft-shell crab. Within 15 minutes, the lobster inflates itself with water, increasing its length by 15 percent and its weight by 50 percent. This extra water expands the wrinkled, soft covering, allowing the lobster room to grow long after the shell starts to harden. The newly molted lobster immediately eats its old shell, digesting the crucial shell-hardening calcium.

Understanding the molt phase clarifies the deficiencies of soft-shell summer lobster. It explains why it so waterlogged, why its claw meat is so shriveled and scrawny, and why its tail meat is so underdeveloped and chewy. A one-pound soft-shell lobster also has far less meat than a one-pound hard-shell lobster. (See Approximate Steaming Times and Meat Yields for more details.)

During the fall, the lobster shell continues to harden and the meat expands to fill the new shell. By spring, lobsters are at their peak, packed with meat and relatively inexpensive since it is easier for fishermen to check their traps than it is during the winter. As the tail grows, it becomes firmer and meatier and will cook up tender, not tough. Better texture and more meat are two excellent reasons to give lobsters a squeeze at the market (see figure 14) and buy only those with hard shells. As a rule thumb, hard-shell lobsters are reasonably priced from Mother's Day through the Fourth of July.