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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???


http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ck/?ref=dining


[The Back Story previews stories appearing in the style and food pages of
The New York Times Magazine. This Back Story is told by Jill Santopietro,
who writes, tests and edits recipes and styles food for the magazine.]

In this Sunday's New York Times Magazine food pages, Sam Sifton, the Times
culture editor and an avid home cook, takes one ingredient - lobster - and
stretches it into three delicious meals. The first night you steam the
lobsters and eat them dipped in butter. The next day you simmer the leftover
shells into an unctuous stock, which you then use to make a risotto. On Day
3, you sear the leftover risotto with eggs for brunch. A sustainable
kitchen, perhaps. But, alas, not necessarily a humane one.

[The URL of that article is he

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/ma...ood-t-001.html ]

You see, Sifton's first recipe calls for steaming the lobsters. Before
testing it, I had always killed lobsters by either boiling or cutting them
through the head. (I once had to slice 50 lobsters through the head for a
restaurant's New Year's dinner. What a way to ring in - and out - the
years.)

I had heard that steaming lobsters or slow cooking them over shallow, gently
boiling water produces tender, juicy meat as opposed to the waterlogged meat
you get from straight-up boiling them. But steaming lobsters always seemed
too cruel. Since testing recipes is part of my job, I was obliged to steam
them as directed. Picture me, alone in my kitchen, face to face with the two
unfortunate lobsters I was about to cook. I heated an inch of salted water,
dropped the lobsters into the pot, frowned and went back to chopping onions.
All of a sudden, I heard a big clank. Stunned, I spun around to witness the
lobsters attempting to knock the lid off of the pot. It was like something
out of a B horror film. I scrambled to secure the lid and then spent the
remainder of the day doing penance.

I e-mailed Sam the next day. How could he do that to the lobster and to me?
But he insisted that cutting them first through the head creates more work
without entirely solving the problem. We left the recipe unchanged.

But now I was on a mission. What is the most humane way to kill a lobster? I
am not against killing lobsters or other animals for food. In fact, I think
if we all had to kill a cow and a chicken once in our lives, there would be
a lot more vegetarians in the world. At the very least, we might eat less
meat and pay more consideration to the animal's sacrifice. Sure, killing a
cow with a blow to the head is more humane than dropping it in a pot of
steaming water. But what about fish? Fish out of water slowly suffocate on a
boat's deck. Certainly not on the top of my list of how I'd like to leave
this planet.

After talking to several cooks, lobster shop owners, a lobster researcher
and a food scientist, I concluded that the only one who really knows how the
lobster feels is the lobster.

I had heard a lot of theories from the "just throw them in the pot" camp,
including the fact that lobsters are invertebrates with the same basic
nervous system as bugs. And we have no problems squashing a mosquito, right?
Lobsters do respond to harmful stimuli but there is no evidence that they
sense pain. They don't even have brains, which leads scientists to believe
that they do not feel suffering.

To my surprise, further research indicated that cutting a lobster through
the head may very well be a crueler approach than boiling. I read that a
lobster's nervous systems does not put it in a state of shock; they are
probably well aware when they are being cut up. Yikes! (That said, a lobster
is designed to deal with extreme cold or to escape predators by dropping a
claw or a leg, just like that.) And most important for chefs, cutting a
lobster through the head allows water to seep in and damage the prized
tamale.

The "don't eat lobster at all" camp insists that lobsters feel pain.
According to one lobster fisherman I spoke with, leaving a lobster on your
counter in 70-degree-plus temperatures for just 30 minutes is as bad if not
worse than steaming it for 10 minutes. The renowned food scientist Harold
McGee didn't have an answer to my question either, but he did find a
non-peer-reviewed report of informal experiments by marine biologists. "They
said that refrigeration prior to steaming seemed to numb them and results in
fewer tail movements during steaming," McGee said in an e-mail message.
"Since the bottom of the northern ocean gets colder than a standard domestic
fridge, which probably feels pretty balmy to them, I suggest putting them in
a pot of salted ice water to anesthetize them deeply and quickly. But I
haven't done the experiment myself to make sure that makes a difference," he
added. Hmm, I'll have to try that out. But if you ask me, death by freezing
sounds pretty terrible, too.

Our problem as humans is that we tend to imagine how we would feel if
giant-clawed, red creatures dunked us into a pot of steaming water. When I
asked Robert Bayer, a professor of animal and veterinary science and the
director of the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine, what, in his
opinion, is the most humane way to kill a lobster, he told me that "there
are a couple of ways to minimize trauma to the person that is doing the
cooking." Wait! I said the lobster, not the cook. But that was exactly his
point: the cook is the one most affected by cooking lobster. He explained
that one of his students did a number of studies looking for a way to
minimize movement of the lobster in the pot. They concluded that chilling
lobsters in the freezer or in salted ice water, as McGee suggests, will
adequately numb them so that when they hit the hot pot they will move very
little. He also suggested that you could put them in fresh rather than
salted water. The change of environment will not slowly suffocate the
lobsters, as some would believe, but will instead put them to sleep. Again,
we cannot put ourselves in the lobster's shoes. The lobster is not a human.
But still it's hard to accept.

In the end, I decided that the next time I cook a lobster I will first chill
it until numb and then dunk it head first into boiling or steaming water. My
advice, which I learned the hard way, is to make sure your lobster pot is
really big and comes with a good lid. Trust me..."

</>


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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???


"Gregory Morrow" > wrote in message
...
>
>

http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ck/?ref=dining
<snip>
> salted water. The change of environment will not slowly suffocate the
> lobsters, as some would believe, but will instead put them to sleep.

Again,
> we cannot put ourselves in the lobster's shoes. The lobster is not a

human.
> But still it's hard to accept.
>
> In the end, I decided that the next time I cook a lobster I will first

chill
> it until numb and then dunk it head first into boiling or steaming water.

My
> advice, which I learned the hard way, is to make sure your lobster pot is
> really big and comes with a good lid. Trust me..."
>

===========
That is why I can never eat lobster.


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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???

On 2008-07-07, Gregory Morrow > wrote:

> out of a B horror film. I scrambled to secure the lid and then spent the
> remainder of the day doing penance.


They guy is a pussy! Try a .44 mag right between the eye stalks.

nb
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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???


"notbob" > wrote >
> They guy is a pussy! Try a .44 mag right between the eye stalks.
>


And then, what, scrape the meat off the walls?


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On 2008-07-07, cybercat > wrote:

> And then, what, scrape the meat off the walls?


Yeah. Pté!

nb


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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???

On Mon, 7 Jul 2008 14:21:12 -0500, "Gregory Morrow"
> wrote:

>In the end, I decided that the next time I cook a lobster I will first chill
>it until numb and then dunk it head first into boiling or steaming water. My
>advice, which I learned the hard way, is to make sure your lobster pot is
>really big and comes with a good lid. Trust me..."


I've had no problem boiling big, feisty crabs. I make sure the water
is at a rolling boil and plop them in. I probably wouldn't have to
cover them, but I do. Oh, don't crowd the pot. You probably did.


--
I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number of carats in a diamond.

Mae West
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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???



notbob wrote:

> On 2008-07-07, Gregory Morrow > wrote:
>
> > out of a B horror film. I scrambled to secure the lid and then spent the
> > remainder of the day doing penance.

>
> They guy is a pussy! Try a .44 mag right between the eye stalks.
>



Lol...


--
Best
Greg


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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???

Gregory Morrow wrote:
>
> After talking to several cooks, lobster shop owners, a lobster
> researcher and a food scientist, I concluded that the only one
> who really knows how the lobster feels is the lobster.


Hmmm . . . this gives me an idea for a new invention.
The Lobster Motel consists of a pot with numerous
safety interlocks and two large carbon electrodes.
Fill it with salted water, put the lobster in,
close the opaque lid, and leave the room for about
3 minutes or until you hear the bell ring. Open it up,
and you have a motionless dead lobster ready for cooking.

Maybe the cooking function should be combined with
the execution function. The hapless lobster is
placed in the machine, a timer begins running,
loud music is played, and a text message is sent
to your cellphone after the lobster is cooked
and ready to eat.
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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???

I guess what I can't agree with is that there's anything
wrong with the result from boiling lobsters in the first place.
I been along the Maine coast, eating boiled lobsters and
they were all really good. They were not tough, watery, mushy, or
anything else gnarly.

Steve
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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???

Gregory Morrow wrote:

> http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ck/?ref=dining
>
>
> [The Back Story previews stories appearing in the style and food pages of
> The New York Times Magazine. This Back Story is told by Jill Santopietro,
> who writes, tests and edits recipes and styles food for the magazine.]
>
> In this Sunday's New York Times Magazine food pages, Sam Sifton, the Times
> culture editor and an avid home cook, takes one ingredient - lobster - and
> stretches it into three delicious meals. The first night you steam the
> lobsters and eat them dipped in butter. The next day you simmer the leftover
> shells into an unctuous stock, which you then use to make a risotto. On Day
> 3, you sear the leftover risotto with eggs for brunch. A sustainable
> kitchen, perhaps. But, alas, not necessarily a humane one.
>
> [The URL of that article is he
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/ma...ood-t-001.html ]
>
> You see, Sifton's first recipe calls for steaming the lobsters. Before
> testing it, I had always killed lobsters by either boiling or cutting them
> through the head. (I once had to slice 50 lobsters through the head for a
> restaurant's New Year's dinner. What a way to ring in - and out - the
> years.)
>
> I had heard that steaming lobsters or slow cooking them over shallow, gently
> boiling water produces tender, juicy meat as opposed to the waterlogged meat
> you get from straight-up boiling them. But steaming lobsters always seemed
> too cruel. Since testing recipes is part of my job, I was obliged to steam
> them as directed. Picture me, alone in my kitchen, face to face with the two
> unfortunate lobsters I was about to cook. I heated an inch of salted water,
> dropped the lobsters into the pot, frowned and went back to chopping onions.
> All of a sudden, I heard a big clank. Stunned, I spun around to witness the
> lobsters attempting to knock the lid off of the pot. It was like something
> out of a B horror film. I scrambled to secure the lid and then spent the
> remainder of the day doing penance.
>
> I e-mailed Sam the next day. How could he do that to the lobster and to me?
> But he insisted that cutting them first through the head creates more work
> without entirely solving the problem. We left the recipe unchanged.
>
> But now I was on a mission. What is the most humane way to kill a lobster? I
> am not against killing lobsters or other animals for food. In fact, I think
> if we all had to kill a cow and a chicken once in our lives, there would be
> a lot more vegetarians in the world. At the very least, we might eat less
> meat and pay more consideration to the animal's sacrifice. Sure, killing a
> cow with a blow to the head is more humane than dropping it in a pot of
> steaming water. But what about fish? Fish out of water slowly suffocate on a
> boat's deck. Certainly not on the top of my list of how I'd like to leave
> this planet.
>
> After talking to several cooks, lobster shop owners, a lobster researcher
> and a food scientist, I concluded that the only one who really knows how the
> lobster feels is the lobster.
>
> I had heard a lot of theories from the "just throw them in the pot" camp,
> including the fact that lobsters are invertebrates with the same basic
> nervous system as bugs. And we have no problems squashing a mosquito, right?
> Lobsters do respond to harmful stimuli but there is no evidence that they
> sense pain. They don't even have brains, which leads scientists to believe
> that they do not feel suffering.
>
> To my surprise, further research indicated that cutting a lobster through
> the head may very well be a crueler approach than boiling. I read that a
> lobster's nervous systems does not put it in a state of shock; they are
> probably well aware when they are being cut up. Yikes! (That said, a lobster
> is designed to deal with extreme cold or to escape predators by dropping a
> claw or a leg, just like that.) And most important for chefs, cutting a
> lobster through the head allows water to seep in and damage the prized
> tamale.
>
> The "don't eat lobster at all" camp insists that lobsters feel pain.
> According to one lobster fisherman I spoke with, leaving a lobster on your
> counter in 70-degree-plus temperatures for just 30 minutes is as bad if not
> worse than steaming it for 10 minutes. The renowned food scientist Harold
> McGee didn't have an answer to my question either, but he did find a
> non-peer-reviewed report of informal experiments by marine biologists. "They
> said that refrigeration prior to steaming seemed to numb them and results in
> fewer tail movements during steaming," McGee said in an e-mail message.
> "Since the bottom of the northern ocean gets colder than a standard domestic
> fridge, which probably feels pretty balmy to them, I suggest putting them in
> a pot of salted ice water to anesthetize them deeply and quickly. But I
> haven't done the experiment myself to make sure that makes a difference," he
> added. Hmm, I'll have to try that out. But if you ask me, death by freezing
> sounds pretty terrible, too.
>
> Our problem as humans is that we tend to imagine how we would feel if
> giant-clawed, red creatures dunked us into a pot of steaming water. When I
> asked Robert Bayer, a professor of animal and veterinary science and the
> director of the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine, what, in his
> opinion, is the most humane way to kill a lobster, he told me that "there
> are a couple of ways to minimize trauma to the person that is doing the
> cooking." Wait! I said the lobster, not the cook. But that was exactly his
> point: the cook is the one most affected by cooking lobster. He explained
> that one of his students did a number of studies looking for a way to
> minimize movement of the lobster in the pot. They concluded that chilling
> lobsters in the freezer or in salted ice water, as McGee suggests, will
> adequately numb them so that when they hit the hot pot they will move very
> little. He also suggested that you could put them in fresh rather than
> salted water. The change of environment will not slowly suffocate the
> lobsters, as some would believe, but will instead put them to sleep. Again,
> we cannot put ourselves in the lobster's shoes. The lobster is not a human.
> But still it's hard to accept.
>
> In the end, I decided that the next time I cook a lobster I will first chill
> it until numb and then dunk it head first into boiling or steaming water. My
> advice, which I learned the hard way, is to make sure your lobster pot is
> really big and comes with a good lid. Trust me..."


The only way I've ever cooked live lobster myself is by plunging them
head first into boiling water. Takes a certain amount of nerve, but
less, probably, than stabbing them through the head. Just remember to
take the bands off of their claws first. Boiled rubber contributes
nothing to the flavor of the finished dish.

An aquaintance, though, had heard that lobsters should be cooked live
and opted to BROIL them. He claims that the sound of their claws
scrabbling at the broiler door still haunts his dreams, and I think
that's just fine. Freakin' dumbass.



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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:08:06 -0500, Kathleen
> wrote:

>An aquaintance, though, had heard that lobsters should be cooked live
>and opted to BROIL them. He claims that the sound of their claws
>scrabbling at the broiler door still haunts his dreams, and I think
>that's just fine. Freakin' dumbass.


LOL.. Funny story. It reminds me of the jokes about cats scratching
the glass doors of microwaves.

Lou
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On 2008-07-08, Abe > wrote:
> Boiling, steaming, dispatch with a brain cut, refrigeration before
> cooking, etc.. It's all being over thought.
>
> Lobsters ARE water-based bugs. They are hard wired stimulus-response
> creatures, and do not have a brain that can interpret a stimulus as
> pain, or pleasure.......


....and you are over stating the issue. The only pain felt at the death of a
lobster is in the brain of the loony tree-huggers who insist on
anthropomorphising animals into their sister Kate.

nb
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notbob > wrote in
:

> On 2008-07-08, Abe > wrote:
>> Boiling, steaming, dispatch with a brain cut, refrigeration before
>> cooking, etc.. It's all being over thought.
>>
>> Lobsters ARE water-based bugs. They are hard wired stimulus-response
>> creatures, and do not have a brain that can interpret a stimulus as
>> pain, or pleasure.......

>
> ...and you are over stating the issue. The only pain felt at the
> death of a lobster is in the brain of the loony tree-huggers who
> insist on anthropomorphising animals into their sister Kate.
>
> nb
>


If I had a sister... first off she wouldn't be named Kate and next off I
wouldn't be calling her a lobster.

--

The house of the burning beet-Alan



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On Jul 7, 4:42*pm, Mark Thorson > wrote:
> Gregory Morrow wrote:
>
> > After talking to several cooks, lobster shop owners, a lobster
> > researcher and a food scientist, I concluded that the only one
> > who really knows how the lobster feels is the lobster.

>
> Hmmm . . . this gives me an idea for a new invention.
> The Lobster Motel consists of a pot with numerous
> safety interlocks and two large carbon electrodes.
> Fill it with salted water, put the lobster in,
> close the opaque lid, and leave the room for about
> 3 minutes or until you hear the bell ring. *Open it up,
> and you have a motionless dead lobster ready for cooking.
>
> Maybe the cooking function should be combined with
> the execution function. *The hapless lobster is
> placed in the machine, a timer begins running,
> loud music is played, and a text message is sent
> to your cellphone after the lobster is cooked
> and ready to eat.


Isn't it kind of silly to think that the lobster's tail is moving
around in the hot water because the lobster feels pain? Maybe it's
just an uncontrollable reflex....

N.

(Are there still such things as "African lobster tails" any more? All
the lobster I see on restaurant menus (and in grocery store tanks)
apparently are Maine lobster, which I think can't hold a candle to
what we used to order in the 70s - African lobster tails.)
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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???

Nancy2 wrote:


> Isn't it kind of silly to think that the lobster's tail is moving
> around in the hot water because the lobster feels pain? Maybe it's
> just an uncontrollable reflex....


I'm not even sure it's reflex. Protein, including muscle fibers,
contracts when exposed to heat.



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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???

Here's a humane death for lobsters... see how happy they are.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7212057@N07/2127388927/


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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???

In article >,
says...
> Gregory Morrow wrote:
>
> >
http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ck/?ref=dining
> >
> >
> > [The Back Story previews stories appearing in the style and food pages of
> > The New York Times Magazine. This Back Story is told by Jill Santopietro,
> > who writes, tests and edits recipes and styles food for the magazine.]
> >
> > In this Sunday's New York Times Magazine food pages, Sam Sifton, the Times
> > culture editor and an avid home cook, takes one ingredient - lobster - and
> > stretches it into three delicious meals. The first night you steam the
> > lobsters and eat them dipped in butter. The next day you simmer the leftover
> > shells into an unctuous stock, which you then use to make a risotto. On Day
> > 3, you sear the leftover risotto with eggs for brunch. A sustainable
> > kitchen, perhaps. But, alas, not necessarily a humane one.
> >
> > [The URL of that article is he
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/ma...ood-t-001.html ]
> >
> > You see, Sifton's first recipe calls for steaming the lobsters. Before
> > testing it, I had always killed lobsters by either boiling or cutting them
> > through the head. (I once had to slice 50 lobsters through the head for a
> > restaurant's New Year's dinner. What a way to ring in - and out - the
> > years.)
> >
> > I had heard that steaming lobsters or slow cooking them over shallow, gently
> > boiling water produces tender, juicy meat as opposed to the waterlogged meat
> > you get from straight-up boiling them. But steaming lobsters always seemed
> > too cruel. Since testing recipes is part of my job, I was obliged to steam
> > them as directed. Picture me, alone in my kitchen, face to face with the two
> > unfortunate lobsters I was about to cook. I heated an inch of salted water,
> > dropped the lobsters into the pot, frowned and went back to chopping onions.
> > All of a sudden, I heard a big clank. Stunned, I spun around to witness the
> > lobsters attempting to knock the lid off of the pot. It was like something
> > out of a B horror film. I scrambled to secure the lid and then spent the
> > remainder of the day doing penance.
> >
> > I e-mailed Sam the next day. How could he do that to the lobster and to me?
> > But he insisted that cutting them first through the head creates more work
> > without entirely solving the problem. We left the recipe unchanged.
> >
> > But now I was on a mission. What is the most humane way to kill a lobster? I
> > am not against killing lobsters or other animals for food. In fact, I think
> > if we all had to kill a cow and a chicken once in our lives, there would be
> > a lot more vegetarians in the world. At the very least, we might eat less
> > meat and pay more consideration to the animal's sacrifice. Sure, killing a
> > cow with a blow to the head is more humane than dropping it in a pot of
> > steaming water. But what about fish? Fish out of water slowly suffocate on a
> > boat's deck. Certainly not on the top of my list of how I'd like to leave
> > this planet.
> >
> > After talking to several cooks, lobster shop owners, a lobster researcher
> > and a food scientist, I concluded that the only one who really knows how the
> > lobster feels is the lobster.
> >
> > I had heard a lot of theories from the "just throw them in the pot" camp,
> > including the fact that lobsters are invertebrates with the same basic
> > nervous system as bugs. And we have no problems squashing a mosquito, right?
> > Lobsters do respond to harmful stimuli but there is no evidence that they
> > sense pain. They don't even have brains, which leads scientists to believe
> > that they do not feel suffering.
> >
> > To my surprise, further research indicated that cutting a lobster through
> > the head may very well be a crueler approach than boiling. I read that a
> > lobster's nervous systems does not put it in a state of shock; they are
> > probably well aware when they are being cut up. Yikes! (That said, a lobster
> > is designed to deal with extreme cold or to escape predators by dropping a
> > claw or a leg, just like that.) And most important for chefs, cutting a
> > lobster through the head allows water to seep in and damage the prized
> > tamale.
> >
> > The "don't eat lobster at all" camp insists that lobsters feel pain.
> > According to one lobster fisherman I spoke with, leaving a lobster on your
> > counter in 70-degree-plus temperatures for just 30 minutes is as bad if not
> > worse than steaming it for 10 minutes. The renowned food scientist Harold
> > McGee didn't have an answer to my question either, but he did find a
> > non-peer-reviewed report of informal experiments by marine biologists. "They
> > said that refrigeration prior to steaming seemed to numb them and results in
> > fewer tail movements during steaming," McGee said in an e-mail message.
> > "Since the bottom of the northern ocean gets colder than a standard domestic
> > fridge, which probably feels pretty balmy to them, I suggest putting them in
> > a pot of salted ice water to anesthetize them deeply and quickly. But I
> > haven't done the experiment myself to make sure that makes a difference," he
> > added. Hmm, I'll have to try that out. But if you ask me, death by freezing
> > sounds pretty terrible, too.
> >
> > Our problem as humans is that we tend to imagine how we would feel if
> > giant-clawed, red creatures dunked us into a pot of steaming water. When I
> > asked Robert Bayer, a professor of animal and veterinary science and the
> > director of the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine, what, in his
> > opinion, is the most humane way to kill a lobster, he told me that "there
> > are a couple of ways to minimize trauma to the person that is doing the
> > cooking." Wait! I said the lobster, not the cook. But that was exactly his
> > point: the cook is the one most affected by cooking lobster. He explained
> > that one of his students did a number of studies looking for a way to
> > minimize movement of the lobster in the pot. They concluded that chilling
> > lobsters in the freezer or in salted ice water, as McGee suggests, will
> > adequately numb them so that when they hit the hot pot they will move very
> > little. He also suggested that you could put them in fresh rather than
> > salted water. The change of environment will not slowly suffocate the
> > lobsters, as some would believe, but will instead put them to sleep. Again,
> > we cannot put ourselves in the lobster's shoes. The lobster is not a human.
> > But still it's hard to accept.
> >
> > In the end, I decided that the next time I cook a lobster I will first chill
> > it until numb and then dunk it head first into boiling or steaming water. My
> > advice, which I learned the hard way, is to make sure your lobster pot is
> > really big and comes with a good lid. Trust me..."

>
> The only way I've ever cooked live lobster myself is by plunging them
> head first into boiling water. Takes a certain amount of nerve, but
> less, probably, than stabbing them through the head. Just remember to
> take the bands off of their claws first. Boiled rubber contributes
> nothing to the flavor of the finished dish.
>
> An aquaintance, though, had heard that lobsters should be cooked live
> and opted to BROIL them. He claims that the sound of their claws
> scrabbling at the broiler door still haunts his dreams, and I think
> that's just fine. Freakin' dumbass.
>
>


Imagine my surprise today when I heard an announcement over the PA in
Price Rite that someones steamed lobster was ready. I love steamed
lobster. I'll have to get a couple next week.

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Default A Humane Death For Lobsters...???

On Tue, 8 Jul 2008 17:02:56 -0500, "Chris Marksberry"
> wrote:

>Here's a humane death for lobsters... see how happy they are.
>
>http://www.flickr.com/photos/7212057@N07/2127388927/
>


maybe you could stick their heads in a glass of whiskey.

your pal,
blake
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