Lobster tails with a charcoal melted herb butter

Lobster tails with a charcoal melted herb butter

Decadent, yes, but also so delicious. Why not treat yourself?

We will often pick up a live lobster when we’re away on holiday in Cornwall. We always get a lot of admiring looks as we grill our lobsters on our MiniMax while we are camping.

I prefer to buy my lobsters live, but there’s no reason why your shouldn’t buy them uncooked and frozen. Waitrose sell lobster tails on their fish counter most of the time and at £7.5o each they’re great value, especially on a Friday when it’s 20% off all fresh fish.

Many companies will ship you both live and frozen lobsters. We’ve used The Fish Society for frozen lobster tails (the ones in the photos). I’ve also been recommended the Berwick Shelfish Company for live lobster.

For this recipe we’re adding some theatre, we’re melting butter into the lobster tails with burning charcoal.

Method

1. An hour ahead of the cook, blend together the garlic, butter and parsley, and then roll into a sausage shape (quite short) using cling film and pop into the fridge to firm up.
2. Setup your Big Green Egg for a direct cook at 200°C with just the stainless steel grid.
3. Place your lobster halves onto the grid, meat side down for just 1.5 minutes.
4. Cook the lobster until the white flesh turns from translucent to opaque at 60-63°C.
5. Take it off the grill and pop a disk of butter onto your lobster tail.
6. Take a burning coal from your grill and pop it onto the butter to melt it. You will get a lot of smoke, but it’s theatre.

Lobster is cooked at 60-63°C. Don’t go beyond this as the meat will toughen and turn rubbery.

How to deal with a live lobster

If you do want to tackle a full live lobster, the most humane way of dispatching it, is to place it in the freezer for about 15 minutes. This will slow its metabolism right down and it will go to sleep. On the top of the lobster’s head, there is a natural dimple and cross. With a large chef’s knife pointing to the front of the head, push the knife through the shell and bring it down, cutting the head in half. Your lobster is now dead. Now continue to cut the whole lobster in half with your knife. You will probably experience nerve twitches, your lobster is dead though.

How much meat will you get?

In a whole lobster, only about 30% of the weight is meat that you can eat.

In lobster tails, about 90% of the weight is edible meat.