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lobster at 10,000 feet!

post #1 of 8
12/30/07 at 7:19am
Thread Starter 
we are having a lobster special at our restaurant for new year's eve. we don't have a steamer, so we need to cook(boil) off the lobsters first, then we will take the meat out, restuff and add some crabmeat etc., then bake.(i don't know all the details of how the dish will be at this point). anyway, one thing i do know, that living at 10,000 feet presents lots of cooking problems...water boils at a much lower temp, and evaporates faster...last time i did lobbys, when i put the creatures in the boiling water, the water stopped boiling so the lobsters were just sort of sitting in this very hot water and the outcome was mushy meat...does anyone have any ideas how to boil these off successfully? can we create a steamer of some sort? only thing i can think of is to boil them off one at a time and keep a lid on the pot the whole time to keep the water at a constant boil...this of course will take all day, so if anyone has any bright ideas...please, bring them on! as we all know who have to work in restaraunts on new year's eve, its already a picnic!...thanks all
joey

food is like love...it should be entered into with abandon or not at all        Harriet Van Horne

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post #2 of 8
12/30/07 at 7:24am
hmm... do you have a pressure cooker? that would make the cooking conditions slightly more normal...

other than adding something to the water to make it boil higher like salt... i have no idea
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post #3 of 8
12/30/07 at 9:26am
Much larger pot of water?

Why don't you roast them? Or poach in butter or something?
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post #4 of 8
12/30/07 at 10:00am
At 10K feet, my calculations tell me that the water should boil right around 195 degrees (f). I do not think that the cooking effect will be that noticeable other than requiring more time since the boiling point will be lower. Adding salt to the water will make almost no difference in changing the temperature at which the water will boil. The salt will, however, season the water which is not a bad thing. In order to get the salt to impact the boiling temperature, the salt concentration would have to be so high it would ruin the food.

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post #5 of 8
12/30/07 at 10:01am
Thread Starter 

lobster at 10,000 feet

they will be 'cooked' twice...the second time they will be baked after stuffing , then reassembled...the initial cooking is to cook them enough to pull the meat out of. these are live maine lobsters, by the way, so they cost a pretty penny to begin with...not sure what a larger pot of water would do..why would that make a difference? i think i remember readiing years ago in an article by julia child that she recommended cooking lobsters in a microwave if you re at high altitude...was i hallucinating? seeems to me they might explode...do you ever wonder who the first person was who decided to eat a lobster?

food is like love...it should be entered into with abandon or not at all        Harriet Van Horne

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post #6 of 8
12/30/07 at 2:33pm
If you have the oven space, put the lobsters on a sheet pan with an inch or so of court bouillon, cover with foil and oven roast them for about 10/12 minutes at very high heat. Reserve the liquid to fortify your sauce after reducing. You can skewer the tail to keep it straight and flat.

You can also plunge your lobsters in very hot water to prevent them from going a bit crazy in the oven. Good luck, this works
Baruch ben Rueven / Chanaבראד, ילד של ריימונד והאלאן
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post #7 of 8
12/30/07 at 6:16pm
The more water you have, the harder it is to lose the boil.
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post #8 of 8
12/31/07 at 8:24am
Why not just remove all of the meat, cube it and saute it?
You said you were going to be adding crabmeat and then baking after restuffing the shells, so I would skip this obviously painful step of boiling them.
Lobster Thermidor is always a hit.
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
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