How to Eat a Whole Maine Lobster

As many of you are already aware, Madfish Grill holds a Lobster Bake every Wednesday night during the summer. We have been doing this for years now, and it is always anxiously awaited by our regular customers. Our lobster bake is $21.99 and starts out with a cup of Kickin' Seafood & Corn Chowder, followed by a bowl full of littleneck clams, red potatoes, corn on the cob and a whole 1 1/4 pound Maine lobster. It's a lot of grub for just over twenty bucks.

While many of our guests already know how to eat their lobster, we find that there are a lot of people who have never undertaken this task before. I am here to teach you the proper way to dissect your lobster... not that tearing apart a sea creature to find every scrumptious little piece of meat could ever really be proper.

Before we dive into the dissection, I want to show you how we get your meal ready...

We start with a live 1 1/4 pound Maine Lobster. This particular little guy was a very angry lobster. I don't think he wanted to be the subject of our lesson. We steam the lobsters to order for a few minutes... till they are good & red.

We also steam the clams, and boil the corn & potatoes with some good fresh herbs.

Now, my friends, the lesson begins. I apologize in advance for some blurry pictures... Ben's gloved hands move fast, kind of like he knows what he's doing. For today's class, you will need a cooked lobster, crackers, scissors and a cocktail fork.

The first thing you want to do is take the tail off. Just grab a hold of it, move it back and forth a bit, and twist it off. Don't worry about the slimy green stuff in the body... it is tomally - the lobster's liver. Some consider this a delicacy, but we don't recommend eating it. We recommend ignoring it and continuing on...

Next you want to take the claws off. Again, grab hold and twist. This will leave you with the tail, 2 claws, and the head. You can twist off the 8 little legs at this point - I am not going to show you, but the best way to get at the sweet, tender meat inside is to bite down on the legs and suck the meat out.

Okay, on to the meat. To get to the tail meat, which many consider the best part of the lobster, hold the tail in the palm of your hand. and crush it. You want to hear a good crack.

Grab the shell on each side, flip it open, and pull the tail meat out in one big piece.

Time for the claws - take your crackers and crack the claw at the base of the small pincer.

Wiggle it around a little to separate the back end of the claw from the meat. Then, wiggle the pincers around a bit and pull out the rest of the meat.

If you are as skilled as our Ben, you can get every morsel of claw meat out in one piece. If you are not as skilled as Ben (like, say, if you are me), you might get to practice using your crackers a little more and you might have to use your cocktail fork to dig out the rest of the claw meat.

The knuckles of the lobster are quick and easy. Just use your crackers at each joint and on the shell in the middle of each joint. You might have to break out the scissors and cut through some of the shell in order to get the meat from each knuckle out in one piece.

All of that twisting, cracking and digging for meat and here is what you end up with! The best part about eating whole lobster is that you get to enjoy it as you go! If you want to come try out your lobster skills, we have live Maine lobster every Wednesday night!