Chris Makes Lobster Rolls

I feel like we're about to have like

a bit of an Annie Hall moment here,

where the lobsters are just gonna come

like scuttling across the top of the counter.

(laughing)

(hip music)

When it comes to lobster rolls, everybody's got an opinion.

Some people want a top-split bun,

some people want a side-split bun.

Other people want butter dressing it,

other people think it should be mayo.

You people who think I'm crazy for having put

lettuce inside these things, celery, no celery.

We're living in a world divided here, but I think

when it comes to lobster rolls you can have it all.

Unless you wanna pay like 45 or 50 bucks a pound

for already shelled lobster meat,

you kinda have to do it yourself.

So, we thought, today we're just gonna do it IRL.

And, we are gonna make lobster rolls from scratch,

starting with live lobsters.

Are you gonna dispatch the lobster right here and now?

I mean I kinda have to, right?

The more humane way to kill 'em, I think,

is to put 'em directly in the steam.

[Man] No.

[Man] What, that's crazy. No.

[Man] No. 100%.

A lot of disagreements, we welcome,

we welcome the debate.

We're just gonna do it.

You put the tip of the knife right

at that sort of joint in the carapace.

(crunching)

All right, so that's like the dirty part of the job.

So, I'm gonna do one shot, clean, each one myself.

And then it can go into the steam.

Part of the reason that I think

steaming lobsters makes sense,

is like getting this much water to boil

actually takes like quite a long time.

And then, you have the displacement of

all the lobsters going into the water.

So, steam, frankly, like it heats quickly,

it's pretty accurate to kind of time the cook with it.

All right, so this should go kinda six to eight minutes.

We're just looking for the lobsters to be bright red,

for those tails to kinda curl up, and we'll be back

in just a sec while we work on our dressing.

Our dressing is pretty simple.

We're just gonna do some celery,

we're gonna cut up like a quarter cup worth of it.

I think it just adds a little bit of texture and crunch

to the roll, and gives you that

kind of like cool, kind of bracing flavor.

Quarter cup of mayo.

About half a teaspoon of lemon zest,

always good to take your zest before you squeeze the juice.

Half a tablespoon of juice.

And then, we're gonna do a full tablespoon of chives.

I just like have this thing with chives

like they can kind of fly all over the place.

Like a little damp paper towel, they already wanna

fly all over your board already, as it it, but.

This at least keeps the root end intact.

If anything, you kinda have to be a little bit careful

with how much lemon juice you're putting in this.

Because you don't want this to be so liquidy

that it just sort of runs right off

of the lobster meat, right?

So, the lemon zest is gonna give you lemon flavor,

but without thinning out this dressing unnecessarily.

Just a little bit of cracked pepper.

Another thing that's nice in here,

just like a splash of hot sauce.

Gives it a little bit more depth.

Not an ad, not sponsored,

just a little dash of Cholula or any hot sauce.

Honestly, there's nothing to it.

And, the point of a lobster roll like isn't

that you should just load it down with tons of flavor.

We're not putting fermented black beans,

or anything crazy in there.

That sort of classic New England flavor profile

like always kinda wins.

I'm just gonna give a quick check.

So, red, tails are curled, I think we're

pretty much good to pull that.

That was about eight minutes.

And, the cool thing about this technique

is that we're gonna be rewarming this meat in butter.

So, if anything, it's better to err on the side

of cooking it a little bit less,

as opposed to cooking it more.

So, we're back with our lobster.

A lot of what you need to do to break down a lobster

is just, you know, you can kinda do with your bare hands.

There's no getting around the fact that like,

you know, by the end of this,

this board is gonna look like absolute carnage.

But, I just like to take the tail off.

Then remove the claws right where

they meet the carapace here.

Twisting, kind of like feeling where it wants to resist

and then keep going just a little bit.

I don't really get into too much of like, you know,

what little meat that there is kind of in the body.

Brad probably only eats lobster bodies or something.

But, we have tail, and we have claws here.

With the tail, I'm just gonna squeeze in,

til I hear cracking all along the length of the tail.

And then, we pull these halves apart.

The tail meat should wanna pop right out.

This was a particularly clean break,

it doesn't always work out quite that nicely.

I'm gonna give that a little rinse.

And then, you have your claws, and you have your knuckles.

(cracking)

This is something that snips are really good at,

removing the meat from those knuckle sections.

Like, the knuckles are actually super delicious.

To me, it's honestly my favorite part of the entire lobster.

So, once you kinda snip from both sides,

you can kinda liberate the knuckle.

Now we get to our claw, right?

Pull the lower part of the claw up.

Wiggle it from side to side.

Feel your way through this, it's a little tricky.

All kinds of ways to proceed from here.

Hammer it, you know, like crab mallet.

You can use a cracker.

My favorite method is using the back of a sturdy knife.

I just whack down into it.

It allows you to just crack both sides of the shell,

and to hopefully keep that nice section

of meat intact in there, like so.

So, the last claw we have to do is this crusher claw.

The crusher claw is a little bit more burly.

Again, like this is my preferred method.

Oh, that was clean break, that was nice.

When you use those lobster crackers,

especially on a crusher claw, trying to crush it

from this way is really impossible.

When you do the back of the knife trick,

starting from like that lower point,

it fractures really nicely.

I think for the purpose of our lobster roll,

I'm just gonna cut through the claw,

leave the knuckles as they are.

I kind of like nice, big, chunky pieces.

Cool.

So, that was one lobster down.

We're gonna melt this butter,

which I think this is five tablespoons.

Pull off two tablespoons of it to brush onto the sides

of our top-split, New England style hot dog buns.

And then, we are gonna warm the lobster up

just gently in the remaining melted butter.

Let's do it.

This is what it's all about.

This is a top-split bun.

It has these beautiful cut faces,

that wanna soak up butter, and then get toasty golden brown.

I'm just gonna brush this butter onto these buns.

I never seem, whoa, whoa.

[Man] Whoa, whoa.

Whoa.

We're just gonna swap that out.

Whoa, look at that.

All right, cool.

One from the end.

We're back.

The thing about like butter and hot dog buns,

is like you don't need a lot of heat.

So, it's like very moderate heat is kinda where it's at.

Cool, so we are just about ready to go here.

We're just gonna take this sort of cold lobster

and we are gonna rewarm it super gently.

You also just coat the lobster in that melted butter.

That's gonna really help from a flavor perspective.

You're kinda gonna get a butter hit,

a little mayonnaise dressing hit,

and it's all gonna come together beautifully.

One more pinch of salt,

and I think we're kinda good to go here.

Flourish, busting these hot dog buns wide open.

I think a little bit of lettuce is cool.

I just think you want a little bit of crunch,

and you wanna provide a kinda barrier between

the dressed lobster meat and the bun.

So, it just doesn't kinda sog out.

Cool.

So, here we have it.

Little chive garnish just to finish.

Best-of-both-worlds lobster roll.

Molly, you wanna get in on a lobster roll?

Mm.

I feel like all the juices like stayed

right in the lettuce where they belong.

[Molly] The lobster is perfectly cooked.

All right, we're gonna chalk this one up as a success.

Mm, delicious.

We need purple carrots.

Purple? Purple.

Purple.

We might have to get the variety bunch.

And then just pull the purple ones out, that's okay.

I'll look.

[Man] Isn't that wasteful?

We'll keep the other ones.

Yeah, we'll keep the other ones.

We'll feed it to the rabbits.

Yeah, we can feed this bunny right here.