On cooking lobster.....

    Whenever I serve lobster in the restaurant I like to partially cook them ahead of time. Through out the years I've worked with many chefs, and everyone has his or her own technique on how to properly cook the lobsters. I'm not saying that my technique is the best, but its the one I find yields me the best results. I like to weight my lobsters ahead of time, normally when I place an order for lobster I'll have the company send me 1.5 pound lobsters. Most of the time they will weigh just about that but here and there I'll find some one pounders amongst the crowd. I like to weight the lobsters ahead of time that way I can separate the smaller ones from the larger ones and cook them separately. Its obvious that a one pound lobster takes less time to cook than a 1.5 pound lobster. I cook the 1.5 pound lobster for 6 minutes in boiling salted water and then immediately shock them in ice water. I'll take the meat out of the shells and take the digestive track out of the tails. I like to pat my lobster meat dry and organize them in a half hotel pan lined with a kitchen towel. The lobsters aren't fully cooked at this point, on pick up I drop the lobster meat into some lobster stock mounted with butter. I keep this stock next to the grill where the liquid maintains a temperature of about 140F. It will take somewhere around 5 minutes for the lobster to warm up, at this point you can serve it or it can honestly stay in the liquid a good 10 minutes without over cooking as long as you maintain that liquid at a very low temperature (140F). This is a good technique if your serving lobster at home, you can do all the work ahead of time and finish cooking it right before you serve it......