Sous Vide Lobster Tail Recipe

Lobster tail is among the most popular and exclusive dishes to eat at a gourmet restaurant. Lobster tail is famous for its difficult cooking process, since the more you cook it, the harder its meat will become.

This sous vide lobster tail recipe will get you that gourmet taste at home.

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Sous Vide Lobster Tail Recipe

Lobster tail doesn't have to be an expensive restaurant-only meal. You can sous vide lobster tail right at home.

We’ll use a live lobster, since dead lobsters start to liquefy their bodies leaving only the shells. Frozen ones have ice crystals that damage the lobster's meat.

This recipe will entail cooking lobster tail at a low temperature to prevent it from becoming too hard. You'll end up with a super juicy dish.

Keep in mind that this recipe could take you over an hour due to prep work with the live lobster.

5 from 1 vote

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Prep Time 45 minutes mins

Cook Time 17 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr 2 minutes mins

Course Main Course

Cuisine American

Servings 1 person

Equipment

• Sous Vide Cooker
• Sous Vide Container
• Scissors
• Large Wooden Stick
• Ice Bath
• Large Pot

Ingredients

  

• 1 Live Lobster
• 1 tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 Ounce (30 grams) Salt
• 1.7 Ounces (50 grams) Butter

Instructions

 

• Fill a pot with water and put it over Medium heat. Bring it to a boil.
• In the meantime, we have to kill the lobster first, here’s how to do it the most humane way possible.
• Lay the lobster on your table, and get a large knife. On the lobster’s head you’ll find a small incision, now place the point of the knife on it. Press hard with the tip of the knife and go through the whole head.
• At this point the lobster is ready, and hasn’t felt any pain. Stick the wooden stick up the tail, starting from lower side of the fin. This helps prevent the lobster tail from rolling on itself while cooking.
• Put the salt in the boiling water, and then submerge the lobster. Be precise as this step will ensure getting the meat off the shell.
• Start boiling for 8 minutes. While it's boiling, fill a bowl with ice and water.
• Once the 8 minutes are up, take the lobster out of the boiling water and immediately put it into the ice bath. This will cause a thermic shock and allow you to get the meat off the shell without any effort.
• Take the lobster out and start removing other parts of the lobster.
• Start by twisting and turning the lobster head to detach it. Do the same with the lobster's front legs.
• Take the tail, and cut around the shell with the scissors. Peel the shell off, and you will get the lobster tail.
• You can also break the lobsters claws, and get more meat from them, since every part of the lobster is filled with meat. Use your scissors for it.
• Take the stick off, and place the lobster tail inside a vacuum bag with rosemary, olive oil and 1 tsp of salt.
• Seal the bag and cook in the sous vide cooker at 55°C / 131°F for 17 minutes.
• Once the lobster is cooked, put a pan over medium heat, with 0.7 oz. (20 gr) of butter and dry the lobster down, toss it in the pan and slowly cook for about 3 minutes.

Notes

Here is your sous vide cooked lobster, ready to be served on top of vegetable purée or featured in a lobster roll.

Keyword Lobster, Seafood

Why I Sous Vide Lobster Tails

If you overcook them, they’ll be rubbery, chewy and pretty darn bad. Undercook them, and it’s a gooey mess. That’s why lobster tails are often cooked for longer than they need to be cooked, which makes their texture weird.

With sous vide cooking, you don’t need to worry about overcooking!

Sous vide cooking uses an immersion circulator which cooks foods at precise temperatures for long periods of time without any direct heat source. It makes sure everything comes out perfectly cooked every single time! Cook sous vide lobster tail is much better than grilled, boiled, or steamed lobster tail.

How to Choose Lobster Tails

Don’t worry so much about this process. You need to focus first on getting what you can actually afford.

Buy lobsters that are as fresh as possible. Look for dates on the package. Look for when it was packaged and/or a “best before” date that’s far away from today.

There are also frozen lobster tail options that you can get. As long as they were only frozen once and not refrozen multiple times, it’ll still have some of its freshness. If you thawed them out once already, it’s best to cook and eat it, rather than refreezing it. 

If you’re able to get cold water lobster tails, they tend to be better quality than warm water ones. However, don’t worry so much if you can only afford warm water ones.

Why is Lobster so Expensive?

Though once lobster was a peasant food fed to prisoners, the population has become overfished due to demand. Lobster prices have thus risen to become rather expensive. 

Also, relative to most other seafoods, lobsters are harder to catch, store, and keep alive. 

Tools to Sous Vide Lobster Tail

To sous vide lobster tail, you’ll need the standard sous vide kit. No special tools or equipment are needed 

You’ll need a sous vide cooker, sous vide container, sous vide bag, and vacuum sealer. 

A sous vide cooker is used to maintain the temperature of your food while it’s being cooked. The temperature is controlled by a thermostat inside the immersion circulator. The cooker will automatically turn off once the desired cooking time is reached.

The sous vide container is where you place your food during the cooking process, in a water bath. It helps insulate the food from the surrounding environment. This allows the food to stay at the same temperature throughout the entire cooking process.

The sous vide bag is used to create a vacuum seal around the food. This prevents water from coming into contact with the food. This keeps the food moist and tender. It’s best to vacuum seal the air out or use the water displacement method sous vide to get as much air out of a ziplock bag as possible.

A vacuum sealer is used to create the vacuum seal. Vacuum sealing ensures that no moisture escapes from the bag.

How to Remove Lobster Meat From the Tail

It may take some effort to remove the meat from the tail of a lobster. With these simple steps, you’ll be able to easily dip lobster meat pieces into melted butter without any mess at all.

First, make sure that you’ve got a clean surface. Make sure that you’ve got something safe to put the lobster tail on. I recommend using a cutting board.

Using kitchen scissors, carefully cut the underside of the lobster tail so that both halves come off easily.

Carefully separate the tail underside and lobster meat. You can use your fingers between the shell and meat to separate them.  

Sous Vide Lobster Tail Temperature

The best temperature to sous vide lobster tail is between 130° and 140°F depending on the texture that you prefer. 

A lower temperature will give you more tender lobster meat, while higher temperatures will give you more of what restaurants give you, a more traditional texture that’s not soft.

For this recipe, I like to sous vide the lobster tail at 131°F because I prefer tender lobster meat. But you can always increase the temperature if you prefer a more meaty, traditional texture.

Check out some of the other popular recipes.

• Sous Vide Wagyu Steak Recipe
• Sous Vide Chicken Breast Recipe
• Sous Vide Salmon Recipe
• Sous Vide Carrots Recipe