This compound butter is great for use in seafood cream sauces such as Sauce Americaine. However, the flavor and color of this lobster butter work tremendously toward finishing many meat, vegetable and poultry sauces. It is simply as the name implies, butter heavily infused with the flavor and color of lobster. As that flavor and color are remarkably intense, a little goes a long way. You can make a couple pounds of the stuff and use it a quarter pound at a time. When frozen, it will last pretty much forever. Although the preparation of lobster butter is messy and time consuming, the fact that it keeps very well justifies planning ahead and making a batch every time you happen to be having lobster at home. If you do find yourself boiling up some lobsters at home but you just aren’t ready (or haven’t yet drunk enough) to go through the lobster butter process, you can put the lobster shells, fat, heads, green stuff, red stuff and all that disgusting content of the dear lobsters that make this lobster butter so very good in a bag and freeze it until you feel like covering the inside of your kitchen once again with the taste and smell of lobster. For the uninitiated it may seem to require a mightily ambitious urge to actually make a batch of lobster butter. However, the cognoscenti understand a pint of lobster butter hidden in your freezer is more powerful (and therefore more valuable) than one of the magic rings.
Ingredients
· The shells (and all the other uneaten parts) of the lobsters you made for dinner. (In this demonstration I used six small lobsters)
· 1⅟₂lbs (six sticks) unsalted butter (I almost always cook with unsalted butter. I find it infinitely preferable to have to add salt to a dish than to try to take some out)
Process
Note: There is no way around it; this is a very messy process. Once you accept that fact, you can trot out your inner child and have fun with it. I do it outdoors in an area that can be hosed off afterward. I work in bare feet. I wear clothes that can be covered with butter and washed. I let the dog lick up all the butter he can find on the patio. Just go with it. You’ll find the end product so wonderful it easily justifies the messy means. ImportantReminder: This process is a perfect demonstration of why I have written my primary law of the kitchen, “Never pick anything up until you have a place to put it down.”
Put the butter, one half stick at a time into the bowl of a stand mixer with small portions of the shells. Use the paddle blade to crush the shells and the butter together.
Start the mixer very slowly adding bits of shell and butter as the mess in the bowl seems to stabilize. Look through the shells for the green goopy stuff. This is the lobster’s liver, in lobsterese it is known as tomalley. It has very concentrated flavor. If you happen to be eating lobster with people who say they like the tomalley, because you want it for the lobster butter, do your best to discourage them from eating it. I usually say something like, “Have you heard the NPR segment about scientists concerned that lobster liver may be linked to preliminary hydro friction?” and the discreetly remove their tomalley filled lobster heads as you refill their wine glass.
Another bit of the mess you really want in the mix is the red stuff which is “roe” or unfertilized eggs. Because of the bright red color, it is often called “coral”. At every lobster feast you will run across someone who eats this stuff. Well, the coral is also a very desirable addition to your lobster butter so whatever it takes; get it away from the dinner table and into the mixing bowl with the butter. Sometimes the truth may actually work. Be sure to tell your guests that they are to remove only the meat from the shells and be sure to place the shells and everything else that is not meat into the receptacle provided.
As the shells break up, the butter gets pinker. Once the fragments are uniform in size and all the butter is in the bowl, you can speed up the mixer to create an appearance of total chaos. Run the mixer at high speed for about ten minutes. Most people when witnessing this for the first time either giggle nervously or experience a moderate to severe panic attack. Although it seems completely wrong, just stick with it. You might be calling me names as it is happening but you’ll be thanking me later.
The dog may need some comforting during the high-speed phase of the mixing.
Once the mixing is finished, we move the entire operation indoors. Transfer the contents of the mixing bowl to a medium size stock pot. The pot should be large enough to hold all the butter/shell mix and be less than half full but be small enough to fit in your oven.
Note: It is possible to do this without a stand mixer. At the eastern Maine home of our dear friends Robin and Wendy, I put the shells and butter in a stock pot and out on the deck with the hammer handle I found at the local hardware store and a chilled bottle of chardonnay I pounded the mix into delicious lobster butter. I gave the new tool to my gracious hosts after I branded it with the title, “Lobstah Buttah Bat.”
Put the pot of butter and shells into the oven and bake at 250° for three hours. Check it frequently and stir it often. You want to cook the flavor of the shells into the butter. It is not good to fry the shells. By stirring frequently you can keep the butter to a very low boil. If it gets too hot it will scorch the butter losing its color and flavor, pretty much the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.
Mr. Toes likes the lobsters much more now than he did when I first brought them home. In retrospect, I’d have to say that Mr. Toes doesn’t care for live lobsters at all.
Toward the end of the three hour bake, put a large stock pot full of water on the stove over high heat and bring it to a boil. Here comes the magical part of the process!
Remove the butter pot from the oven to the stovetop. Pour the boiling water over the butter until water is about two inches from the top of the pot. Gently stir the water/butter to free up the shells so they can sink. They all won’t sink but we’ll fix those floaters later.
Carefully (so you don’t splash boiling water/butter all over the place) put the pot into a cooler that has enough iced water to rise to the level of the contents of the pot but not so much that it will flood into the pot. Cover the pot and shut the cooler.
After an hour or so you will find the air in the cooler has become quite warm and the pot has cooled off. Carefully lift the pot from the cooler and put it in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning you’ll find the magic has happened! The shells have sunk to the bottom and the butter has floated to the surface.
Look at that color! Smell the richness of the butter! Slide a thin blade (I use a cake spatula) around the perimeter separating the butter from the pot.
Here is the stuff for which you’ve been working so hard, a nice slug of bright orange butter.
You’ll notice there are still a lot of shell bits and other things we don’t want to discuss, much less eat in there so break up the slug and put it in a saucepan over low heat.
Once it has melted again, pour it through a fine sieve. This is now useable lobster butter. You can freeze it and it will keep forever. Be bold, experiment, have fun!
