Published February 12, 2007.
What's the best way to grill sweet, briny lobster meat over a smoky fire?
Grilled whole lobsters taste just like steamed lobster; for real grilled flavor, you need to split them. But unless you pay close attention, the exposed meat can turn rubbery surprisingly fast.
We wanted to create a dish more complex than simple steamed lobster—one in which the smoky grill flavors would penetrate the tender lobster meat, maximizing its sweetness.
Simply splintering the lobster in half yielded the most promising results in our initial grill tests. After trying a variety of combinations and cooking times, we settled on 1 1/2- to 2-pound lobsters, starting them cut side down and then flipping them after two minutes to keep moisture loss to a minimum. To allow the claws to finish cooking at the same time as the tail meat, we needed to crack one side of each claw and cook them covered with an aluminum pie plate. Two further procedures gave us maximum flavor. First, we blended the tomalley (which we had removed when the lobster was split) with bread crumbs, garlic, parsley, and seasonings, giving us a stuffing that lent valuable flavor and texture. And instead of waiting to dip the finished lobster in butter, we slathered melted garlic-flavored butter onto the meat prior to grilling.
list of recipes
