How to prepare a lobster

It's the most prized of seafoods, and now's the best time to enjoy it. But preparing your catch is not for the squeamish. Rob Sharp learns from the experts

(Solent News)

Claws snapping, tail writhing, antennae twitching. Then, a plop into water followed by an ear-splitting squeal. It's no surprise that such a gruesome ritual – once described by the author David Foster Wallace as a "medieval torture fest" – continues to divide gourmands too squeamish to murder a crustacean in cold blood.

It's a pressing question: how best to neutralise your lobster? On the one hand, the animal rights lobby argues for freezing for two hours before the animal convulses off its mortal coil. On the other, the country's best chefs say freezing for too long can destroy the lobster's flesh, and opt instead for a knife to the brain. Even still, that process is accompanied by buckets of disgusting black goo and prolonged, spooky twitching, little better than all that legendary screeching (which is the sound of air escaping from beneath the crustacean's doomed carapace). For meat-eaters, there's no easy answer, but it's a timely dilemma, considering that it's currently high lobster season, when the native European lobster, homarus gammarus, can be pot-fished in the highest numbers off the British coast. Our nation's chefs, obsessed by local ingredients, need to be completely au fait with their catch's entrapment to endgame. Additionally, websites such as SeafoodDirect.co.uk offer fresh cooked sea lobster for £39.50 a kilogram. Lidl famously sells whole wild Canadian lobsters for as little as £4.99. Ethically minded consumers would be wise to follow professional cooks' interest in their shellfish's provenance before indulging in this vitamin-rich food, with its fewer saturated fats than beef, pork and chicken, and which tastes beautiful to boot.

But the question remains: what's the best way of killing a lobster? I am invited to Weymouth to see the source-to-sauce lobster-catching process and find out. Andy MacKenzie, the head chef at Winchester's Lainston House, a luxury hotel conversion of a 17th-century country house set among 63 acres of verdant hillside, demands top-quality nosh for his upper-crust guests, and that means locally sourced food and ingredients.

"You can't get fresher than the lobster we serve, which is consumed just hours after being caught," MacKenzie says. "I've fallen in love with the process. You can see the passion of all the people involved just by travelling down to the coast, and that's something I've often enjoyed. There are fishermen risking life and limb to get this stuff to us. I'm sure that comes across to our customers."

His lobsters' journey begins several miles off the coast of Weymouth. Here, the seabed comprises "broken ground", a mixture of sand and rock that is an ideal crustacean breeding place. The fishermen use instinct, not sonar, when deciding where to sink their pots. Some of them work a 14-hour day to deliver catches of crab and lobster of around 700 kilos, and while still out at sea, crews bind the lobsters' claws and toss them into their boats' hollow hold before delivering them to onshore aerated holding tanks. Here, they are sorted for size, with those weighing between one and a half and two kilos deemed the highest quality and selected for delivery to Lainston House; smaller specimens might be shipped abroad, where there is a bigger shellfish market.

"The Portuguese and the Spanish pay the best prices," says Nick Assirati, the managing director of Portland Shellfish, the distribution company supplying lobster to MacKenzie. "It's a cultural thing. If you go to Brittany on Christmas Eve, everyone will sit around eating scallops. While many people here like lobster, over there it's a way of life."

The distributor is quick to quash any speculation that this lucrative catch could be overfished. "A lot of fish stocks are controlled by the quota system," he explains. "Shellfish aren't. You can catch as many as you want, which means every man and his dog tries to get them; that can lead to overfishing. Equally, there can sometimes be too many lobsters for the fishermen to cope with. There needs to be a balance. Fishermen need to have an incredible knowledge of the size of populations within different areas."

The lobster is then delivered directly to MacKenzie's kitchen (consumers buying lobster directly would need to transport them in a properly aerated tank). Then, the killing: LobsterLib.net discusses various methods – stabbing them in the head, boiling from cold, boiling from fresh water – and eventually comes to the conclusion that the most preferable thing to do is to avoid eating them altogether.

The RSPCA says lobsters should not be subjected to rapid changes in water temperature, and should not be held with incompatible species. To kill, they recommend putting the lobster on a flat surface, on its back with its claws tied. The head should be cut through in one swift movement to pierce it and destroy the brain.

"The one used by most chefs I know is to put the lobster to sleep in the deep freeze for 15 minutes," says the food-policy journalist Alex Renton. "But this is not a tactic for the easily distracted. A few minutes too long and you will destroy the texture of the meat by actually freezing it. The RSPCA recommends freezing the lobster for two hours, which is clearly absurd."

So how does MacKenzie do it? Like Renton, he recommends using a brief spell of cold storage, then holding a sharp knife behind the still-breathing lobster's head and plunging it quickly into its cranium. The animal is then boiled and skilfully de-shelled. MacKenzie demonstrates how he removes the animal's claw meat with a knife and deftly cuts it in two. Suitably weakened by the boiling process, its shell easily falls apart. Unfortunately, the majority of its meat cannot be used because it contains the lobster's internal organs. But the small amount of flesh that remains is bagged up or used immediately; on the receiving end of a quick seasoning, and tasting distinctive and firm, it is especially gratifying when augmented with roast vegetables and a previously prepared, mouth-watering jus made from lobster stock (boiled down from those bits of the lobster that would otherwise be thrown away).

"It's all about saving the planet at the end of the day," MacKenzie concludes. "I've worked at the hotel for 24 years and you make great relationships as you go along. The neighbour that you know is better than the one you don't. For me to know how any dish is produced, and where, and how, and that it's done to the best of someone's ability, is invaluable. The producers do all the hard work. I do the easy bit, really, making something fancy. The hard graft's all been done out at sea."

How to prepare a lobster

* Place the lobster on a large chopping board. Place the tip of a large sharp knife in the cross found at the top of the lobster's head. Pierce the shell with the knife and continue all the way to the board. Place the now-dead lobster into a large pan of boiling water. Simmer for six minutes (for a medium-sized lobster) and do not let the water boil too much. Refresh the animal in iced water. As soon as the lobster is cold, remove it from the ice and drain.

* To shell, place the lobster tail in your left hand and the head in your right. Twist and pull to remove the head. With the tail, lay the lobster on its side. Place one hand over the other and press down until the lobster bones crack. Peel the shell from the lobster. Cut the tail meat in half lengthwise. Pull and twist the claws of the lobster. Break off the small part of the pincer. Tap the side of the claw with your knife and move from left to right. Remove the intact claw meat, wash under water.

* To make a lobster stock, place the lobster shell in a large tray and roast in the oven for 200C for 15 minutes. In a thick-bottomed pan sweat star anise, rosemary and thyme. Once softened, increase the heat and lightly colour the mixture before adding tomato purée. Place the lobster shell pieces in the pan and add chicken stock. Add to the lobster tray in the oven. Bring to a simmer and cook for two hours. Reduce until thick and syrupy.