All About Lobsters in New England

New England lobster differs from the Caribbean spiny lobster in that it has huge, powerful claws. When cooked, the claw meat is tender, sweet and delicious, and looked upon as choicer than the tail meat, which is also good.

In colonial America, lobsters were so plentiful in New England's coastal waters that they were used as pig fodder. The prize catch back then was bland codfish.

Fresh from the water, lobsters are green colored with dark splotches. They only turn red when cooked.

New England restaurants prepare lobsters in any number of elaborate ways, but to a true New Englander there are but three ways to cook a lobster: you boil (or steam) it, you broil it, or you grill it.

To broil or grill, take a live lobster, make a straight cut underneath from head to tail, and place cut-upward under the broiler, or cut-downward on the grill.

Boiling (really, steaming) is the most popular method, however, and is the easiest of all. Bring a few inches of seawater to boil in a big pot, drop in the live lobsters, cover the pot, bring the water to a boil again, and let the lobsters steam until they turn bright red (10 to 12 minutes, a few minutes longer for lobsters of several pounds or more).

When you take them out, the lobsters will be very hot and full of hot water. Give them a few minutes to cool so you don't burn your fingers or get scalded by boiling water when handling them.

The ease of eating a lobster depends partly upon the time of year. Lobsters moult (shed their shells) every year in early summer. Underneath the about-to-be-moulted shell, a new, roomier paper-thin shell is growing.

Just before shedding (May or June) a New England lobster's shell is thick and hard, and the claws difficult to break open. You will certainly need tools—maybe even a hammer!—to break the hardest claws.

Just after moulting, the shell is as thin as heavy paper, and the claws easy to open without tools.

(How do they wrestle their way out of those complicated, hard shells? Beats me!)

The new shells begin to harden within a few weeks after moulting, but an August lobster is still much easier to eat than a May lobster.

Here's how to eat a lobster.

A few lobster terms:

Chick - a lobster weighing about one pound (450 grams) in its shell. It's prohibited to catch lobsters weighing much less than this.

Select - a lobster weighing between 1-1/2 and two pounds (680 grams to 910 grams). These are the choicest because they make a good one-person portion. (Over half the weight of a lobster is shell, so a Select gives you less than a pound of meat.)

Cull - a lobster that's missing a claw. Claw meat is choice, so culls sell for less than lobsters with both claws.

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