If you happen to snapped up a few of the steeply discounted cooked lobsters offered at Australian supermarkets within the lead as much as Christmas, listed below are 6 Christmas-worthy final minute lobster recipes you may make with them. I’ll additionally present you the way straightforward it’s to take away the lobster meat from the shell!
TOP TIP: Maintain it easy!
Lobster Recipes
Rounding off a loopy 12 months, Australian grocery shops have been promoting lobsters at steeply discounted costs within the weeks main as much as Christmas attributable to commerce tensions with China. (Learn extra under.)
If you happen to’ve been fortunate sufficient to select one up, listed below are 6 Lobster recipes you may make with them. All straightforward – and also you’re prone to have every little thing to make not less than one in all these, if not two or three!
These are COOKED lobster recipes
This publish particularly accommodates recipes for cooked lobsters and crayfish, not uncooked, as a result of the discounted lobsters that spurred this publish got here cooked.
There’s a broader number of preparation choices for uncooked lobster which aren’t lined on this publish.
Greatest approach to put together and serve cooked lobster
If you happen to purchase lobster already cooked, it’s greatest to not prepare dinner it once more to protect the flavour and never danger overcooking it. It’s a plain incontrovertible fact that freshly cooked uncooked lobster is juicier and has higher flavour than shopping for one already cooked, an element that contributed to the steep reductions.
So to retain one of the best lobster flavour, don’t prepare dinner it and don’t overpower it with sturdy sauces or garnishes. Simply serve it with a easy sauce – resembling a garlic butter sauce or Rose Marie Sauce. Serve it shared fashion on a platter, or as a sublime individually plated starter!
My largest recommendation: maintain it easy. Lobster meat is great as it’s. It doesn’t want something greater than a easy sauce!
Lobster Recipes
Listed below are the recipes I’m sharing right this moment. Most reference sauces from different seafood recipes on my web site, so that you could be assured they’re already tried and examined!
- Lobster with seafood sauce (select from 4)
- Lobster Cocktail (Prawn Cocktail – however made with lobster!)
- Lobster with herb and garlic butter
- Lobster with French Lemon Butter Sauce (Beurre noisette)
- Lobster with Salsa Verde
- Lobster Rolls (just for good high quality cooked lobster)
1. Seafood Sauces (4 varieties)
Serving lobster alongside seafood sauces is a basic summer season means of serving lobster that allow’s the attractive lobster flavour take centre stage. Assume – large seafood platters served at eating places!
Virtually any seafood sauce you’ll ordinarily serve with seafood will work properly with lobster. Listed below are 3 classics plus our household favorite that I exploit as Prawn Dipping Sauces (ie alongside large buckets of cooked prawns!):
- Marie Rose / Thousand Island sauce – a impartial creamy pink sauce made with mayonnaise and ketchup that can let the flavour of lobster shine;
- Seafood Cocktail Sauce – the punchier flavoured model of Marie Rose. The sauce itself really has flavour, it’s tangy and type of savoury, with extra layers of flavour as a result of there’s extra components on this. Use sparingly with lobster ie don’t achieved closely!
- Tartare sauce – similar to what you get on the native fish and chip store! (Besides higher, as a result of you’ll be able to really style the gherkins and capers in it); and
- Our Household Favorite Seafood Sauce – a cross between Marie Rose and Tartare with extra freshness and flavour.
You should purchase all these sauces on the grocery retailer. However they pale compared to freshly made!
2. Lobster Cocktail
If you happen to’re considering hey, that’s prawns within the picture not lobster!, you’re proper! The picture under is Prawn Cocktails and lobster makes an outright good swap for the prawns within the recipe.
It is a good, straightforward thought for elegant, particular person starters.
3. Lobster with herb & garlic butter
A great straightforward one you simply can’t go incorrect with! Melted butter, garlic, lemon and an excellent hit of recent parsley.
To serve: Drizzle generously over sliced lobster, and likewise serve in a small bowl so everybody might help themselves (or dunk!). For particular person plates, serve it just like the Lemon Browned Butter Lobster pictured under.
TIP: Be sure to supply crusty bread. All of the lobster juices and butter makes for an excellent bread-plate-mopping scenario!
4. Lemon Browned Butter Sauce for Lobster
Known as Beurre noisette in French, this can be a good luxurious sauce for all sorts of seafood and is a highly regarded sauce recipe used for fish. The rationale it’s so good is as a result of it’s not simply melted butter with lemon, it’s browned butter which has a way more intense, nutty flavour than plain melted butter.
Plus, the extraordinary golden yellow color is beautiful! And to assume that is simply made with two components – butter and lemon! (It’s all within the methodology)
The way to serve it: As above with garlic butter, drizzle and likewise present additional for every individual to spoon over as a lot as they need.
TIP: It is a good one to make use of if you wish to plate up particular person start-size plates, resembling pictured on the high of the publish. It seems to be elegant as a result of the butter is a extra intense yellow color than simply regular melted butter, and as talked about above it’s a bit fancy pants Frenchy.
5. Salsa Verde
A inexperienced sauce made with finely minced recent herbs blended with olive oil and a bit of garlic, that is spectacular with most seafoods, from cooked fish to grilled prawns, and most definitely for lobster.
The way to serve it: Platter fashion for sharing, with a bowl of Salsa Verde for folks to assist themselves. Or the lobster sliced into chunk dimension items with Salsa Verde drizzled over it, served as particular person starters – as pictured above.
6. Lobster Rolls
Cooked lobster is appropriate for making lobster rolls, a New York favorite comprised of shredded or chopped lobster in a mayonnaise sauce stuffed inside comfortable rolls.
Whereas I’m together with it on this checklist, I personally didn’t make it with the discounted lobsters in query as a result of I discovered that the lobster flavour was not adequate. It could get misplaced within the bread, and admittedly be a waste.
Nevertheless, as a result of it’s such a basic use of lobster, I’m together with it in my checklist. The picture featured above is from this Mini Lobster Rolls Recipe by Gourmand Traveller Australia.
TOP TIP: Don’t make this recipe until you could have freshly cooked lobster. This doesn’t embrace the discounted lobster presently extensively obtainable in Australian supermarkets!!
No lobster mornay? No Lobster pasta??
There are some nice basic lobster recipes that may solely be made with uncooked lobster. So on this part, I cowl off on why they don’t seem to be appropriate to make with pre-cooked lobster.
As talked about above, the lobster flavour, tenderness of juiciness of the meat just isn’t pretty much as good with pre-cooked lobsters in comparison with freshly cooked uncooked lobsters.
As well as, not beginning with uncooked lobster means you lose the power to make dishes that require a prolonged prepare dinner time, the additional flavour you get from the shell and even the flavour you get in sauces from searing the uncooked lobster meat, resembling after we make issues like Creamy Garlic Prawns.
This limits the makes use of of pre-cooked lobster in comparison with uncooked lobster which can be utilized for a a lot wider number of resembling pastas, lobster bisque and Lobster Mornay, to call just a few.
If you happen to simply tossed lobster meat into pasta or a soup, you’ll solely get lobster flavour once you bit into a bit of meat – and it’s dispersed all through. So to make a very good, say, lobster pasta, you really want the lobster flavour within the sauce to coat the pasta, and to attain this it is advisable begin with uncooked lobster.
The way to take away shell / meat of lobster (crayfish)
Round 95% of the meat in lobster is within the tail, in order that’s all we have to take away. It’s not troublesome to do with cooked lobster right here’s how:
1. Insert knife between head and tail – insert a small knife within the hole between the shell the place the tail and head meat on a forty five diploma angle, nearly scraping the within of the shell of the pinnacle;
2 Reduce by way of the flesh alongside the highest and aspect of the lobster (no want to chop all the way in which round);
3. Twist off tail – then give the tail a twist and it’ll separate from the pinnacle. A great chunk of the meat from inside the pinnacle needs to be connected. If the meat has yellow and black bits on it from inside the pinnacle, simply scrape or reduce it off. The yellow stuff known as tomalley – or “mustard” – as has intense lobster flavour…. but it surely’s an acquired style. I don’t eat it!
4. Reduce underside with scissors – flip the tail the other way up so the comfortable shell is dealing with up. Then reduce down both aspect so you’ll be able to peel it again a bit like opening a can of sardines!
5. Loosen meat – simply use your fingers to loosen the lobster meat from the shell. It comes out simply and neatly;
An voila! Lobster tail meat take away from the shell in a single neat piece!
Seems like a large prawn, no? ?
Serve – you’ll be able to both serve the lobster meat in a single piece and let folks reduce it themselves into chunk dimension items. Or you’ll be able to reduce it up into chunks – as much as you, and relies upon how a lot lobster there’s to go round.
Scroll as much as see images of particular person plates the place I sliced the lobster meat, and the platter the place I stored a lot of the items entire.
Tip: Maintain not less than one lobster head. It makes for excellent presentation on a platter!
The way to heat cooked lobster
Although I don’t advocate cooking cooked lobster, you’ll be able to heat it up barely if you want.
The very best methodology is to steam utilizing a range steamer, only for a couple of minutes till the lobster meat is warmed by way of. Don’t danger a microwave steamer – too straightforward to prepare dinner the lobster!
Low-cost lobsters?!! The background….
Commerce tensions with China has seen our lobster export trade come to a standstill. China accounts for 95% of our $750 million lobster export trade – that’s a LOT of lobster!
So tens of millions of {dollars} of lobsters which had been destined for the export market have made their approach to mainstream Australian grocery shops (Woolworths and Coles). They’re being offered at closely discounted costs of ~$20 every, making them much more accessible for on a regular basis Aussies in comparison with the standard hefty worth tags, upwards of $100 every!
These discounted lobsters are offered cooked and frozen, so the recipes contained on this publish is particularly for cooked lobster.
And there you could have it. Some fast last-minute recipes for fellow Aussies who’ve been fortunate sufficient to attain a few of the low cost lobsters this Christmas. An impromptu publish I made a decision to share after studying at 11 am right this moment that I’ll be in lockdown over Christmas Day – so I made a decision to make use of the lobsters I acquired for Christmas Day Lunch to do that publish as a substitute!
I do know I say these are “fast and straightforward”, however I did handle to make a frightful mess photographing these recipes…. The clear up was lengthy and painful!!! ? – Nagi x
Watch easy methods to make it
The video might be up both later tonight or tomorrow morning! I needed to get the recipes out asap so readers can choose up groceries if wanted! However the good factor about having a collection of recipes is that hopefully you could have the components for not less than one in all them ?
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Lobster Recipes – for cooked lobster or crayfish
Prep: 5 minutes
Starter
Servings4 – 8 folks
Faucet or hover to scale
Substances
Seafood Sauces for Lobster – select:
Lobster with Herb & Garlic Butter (sufficient for two lobsters)
Lobster with French Lemon Butter Sauce (2 lobsters)
Lobster with Salsa Verde (4 lobsters)
Directions
Take away shell (see images in publish):
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Reduce between head and tail: Insert a small knife at a forty five diploma angle into the hole between the tail and head. Reduce alongside the highest and sides by way of to the center – no have to do beneath.
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Separate head from tail: Twist the tail to separate it from the pinnacle. It would pull out meat from the pinnacle as properly.
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Clear: Scrape or trim off any yellow of black residue on the tip that got here out of the pinnacle.
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Reduce underside: Reduce down each side of the comfortable shell on the underside of the tail. Then peel it again like a can of sardines to disclose the lobster flesh.
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Take away flesh: Fastidiously take away the flesh – it ought to come off the shell cleanly.
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Residual meat in head: There might be some residual meat within the head that can be utilized. The yellow “mustard” (referred to as tomalley) has very intense lobstar flavour however is an acquired style… I don’t eat it!
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The way to serve: Lobster tail meat could be served entire, sliced into thick or skinny items or diced, relying on use. I don’t advocate shredded because it loses juiciness.
Seafood Sauces:
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Make Sauce per the Dipping Sauces recipe.
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Serve alongside lobster for dipping. Both reduce the lobster into chunk dimension items, or serve entire for folks to chop themselves. Plate it up individually or on a share platter.
Lobster Cocktail:
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Make the Prawn Cocktail recipe however substitute prawn for lobster reduce into small chunk dimension items.
Lobster with Herb & Garlic Butter:
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Soften butter in a small skillet over medium warmth. As soon as foamy, add garlic and prepare dinner till mild golden. Take away from range, add lemon juice and parsley.
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Serving: Pour into serving bowl and serve and serve alongside lobster. Garnish with parsley leaves and lemon wedges.
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Consuming: Let folks both dip in chunk dimension items or drizzle over lobster, plated up indivudually or on a share fashion plate. Mop plate clear with crusty bread!
Lobster with Lemon Browned Butter Sauce
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Make the sauce per the Lemon Browned Butter Sauce recipe.
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Slice the lobster into chunk dimension items. Pile onto plate or organize on indivudual plates. Sprinkle with salt (mandatory as browned butter is unsalted).
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Serving: Drizzle with some browned butter, then serve extra on the aspect. Garnish with parsley leaves and lemon wedges.
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Consuming: To eat, dip or drizzle lobster with extra browned butter. Mop plate clear with crusty bread!
Salsa Verde:
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Blitz components in a Nutribullet or small meals processor till it turns into a paste. It needs to be clean however a little bit of courseness for texture ie do not mix right into a smoothie.
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Slice lobster into chunk dimension items. Organize on indvidual plates or share plate. Drizzle little dollops of salsa verde over lobster – do not go overboard, the flavour is sort of sturdy!
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Garnish with lemon wedges & parlsey leaves, serve.
Lobster Rolls:
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Make per the Gourmand Traveller “Mini Lobster Rolls” recipe. Solely make this when you’ve got freshly cooked or superb high quality pre-cooked lobster. (This doesn’t embrace the steeply discounted cooked frozen lobsters presently promoting at Woolworths & Coles in Australia!)
Recipe Notes:
When you have uncooked lobster, the number of choices is far broader so don’t restrict your self to simply this checklist!
Frozen lobster – place on a tray or giant bowl and thaw in a single day within the fridge. Drain properly earlier than utilizing.
Eradicating lobster shell – don’t do that till you’re able to serve the lobster because it protects the flesh and retains it juicy.
2. Salsa Verde – leftovers could be frozen. Thaw in fridge in a single day. Use as sauce for fish or different seafood. Sturdy flavour means you needn’t do anything to flavour the fish!
Lifetime of Dozer
The final minute cancellation of Christmas events and prolonged keep by household throughout this Christmas interval implies that each Dozer and I’ve been doing numerous THIS over the previous week!!