Steam-Baked Frozen Lobster | Sybaritica

Live lobsters are a very rare treat in our local stores. Indeed, about once, or maybe twice a year is the most we ever see them. Occasionally, cold cooked lobster appear in the display cabinets, but this is the first time I have ever seen whole frozen ones. Naturally, when these ones showed up the other day I grabbed a couple to see what they might be like.

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure how to cook them. I like lobster cold myself, but my wife only likes it hot and so I had to decide how to prepare them given that they had been cooked already. Dropping them into boiling water, as I would do with fresh ones, seemed a little problematic for a couple of reasons; first, I was afraid that the meat would get overly tough before the inner part was cooked and, secondly, I had no idea how much salt had been used in the first cooking before they were frozen. After thinking about it for a while, I came up with the idea of slowly baking them at low temperature with just enough liquid to create some steam…

I put the lobsters in a baking dish along with the liquid that had been thrown of in the plastic package as they thawed (there was about a half cup or so, in all), and then scattered some scallions over top. I also added a couple of very thin lemon slices for an aromatic fillip and poured over a quarter cup of white wine. I tented the baking dish with foil to keep in the stem and then baked the lobsters at 275 degrees for about 40 minutes.

By the way, you may have noticed that the lobsters were placed on their backs in the baking dish. The reason for this is so that their natural juices remain in the shell as they cook. If ever you happen to buy cold cooked lobster, make sure that they are packaged upside-down as well. Those packaged right side up tend to be overly dry and not very good…

The Verdict

This was actually a lot better than I expected. I was a bit skeptical of any twice cooked lobster being up to much but, in fact, the meat retained its texture and sweetness very nicely. On the whole, I would prefer live lobsters but, since beggars can’t be choosers, this method works very nicely for the pre-cooked frozen variety.

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