hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with lobster thermidor that's right
i'm very excited to show you my take on this iconic special occasion dish and
not only is this gonna look great and taste amazing
it's also gonna be easy to eat which is not only something we can say about your
typical lobster recipe it's almost as if they've developed some kind of
evolutionary defense mechanism to help protect them from being consumed but
here because we're using tails and separating the meat from the shell ahead
of time we're gonna end up with something extremely user friendly that
by the way only looks hard to make as you're about to see and first up we're
going to need to prep our tails before we cook them and what I have here are
four approximately four ounce each lobster tails although this technique
will work the same with any size and to prep these what we need to do is take
some scissors and cut through that lighter softer bottom shell right where
it attaches on the side to that thicker upper shell so we will cut from the big
end all the way to the talent right with those two shells meat on both sides and
by doing that once this is cooked we're gonna be able to pull out all the meats
and that shall we cut and then once our lobster meat mixture is prepped
we'll go ahead and stuff that right back into the shell to create what most
people think is a pretty impressive presentation so we'll go ahead and make
our two cuts on the bottom of each tail at which point we'll head to the stove
to almost cook these all the way but not quite and we'll do that in some melted
butter over medium-high heat so we'll go ahead and place those in cut
side down and yes I'm also tossed in any of those little flippers that came off
and what we'll do is cook this covered for about five minutes or so until like
I said they're just about all the way cooked through
okay don't forget this is gonna get cooked again once our shells are stuffed
so we don't want to overcook them at this stage so what we'll do is start
those cut side down and then after about three minutes we'll go ahead and uncover
those and turn them over to the shell side or at least one side of the shell
side because they're kind of curvy and then once those returned we'll
recover it cook that for one minute uncover it turn those to the other side
of the shell and then go ahead and give those one last minute at which point if
everything goes according to plan they should be just about almost cooked
through all right let's say 85 to 90% okay so to recap about three minutes on
the cut side and then a couple minutes on the shell side and once that set what
we want to do is turn off the heat and remove those lobster tails to a bowl
along with any other shell remnants we've added because we're just about to
use this pan to cook our shallots so once everything's been removed we'll put
the heat back on the medium and add a nice chunk of butter along with some
minced up shallots and a pinch of salt and what we'll do is cook those stirring
for about three or four minutes until they sort of soften up and turn
translucent and as these cook the moisture from those shells should start
to deglaze the bottom of the pan of any of those lobster juices to start to
caramelize on and then what we'll do after a few minutes once our shallots
are looking a little something like this let's go ahead and toss in our diced
mushrooms if we're using these are optional I'll do I consider them
personally mandatory and we'll go ahead and cook those stirring for about maybe
five or six minutes until they sort of turn a golden brown and not only are
these mushrooms going to help increase the volume of our stuffing which of
course in the business we call filler but they're also like flavor sponges and
they're going to absorb all that caramelized lobster flavor from the pan
and since once cooked they have a similar texture it's going to seem like
you actually have more Lobster than you do so like I said we'll go ahead and
cook those until they're sort of golden and look at something like this at which
point we're going to toss in about a tablespoon of flour and we'll go ahead
and stir that in until the mushrooms are coated and then we'll cook this for an
additional two minutes to take the raw tasting edge off that starch and don't
be surprised as some of that flour starts to stick to the bottom of the pan
totally normal and not a bad thing because what we're gonna do after
cooking the flour for a couple minutes is deglaze with a splash of cognac or if
times are tough just some brandy and what we'll do is pour that in and then
ignite it with this lighter to burn off all the alcohol
which it would have done anyway but if people are watching that's kind of fun
to do people seem to like explosions but anyway we're gonna flambe with some
cognac and as soon as that liqueur disappears which is only gonna take a
few seconds we will quickly pour in some cold milk and give everything a stir and
then what's gonna happen is this comes back up to temperature as a couple
things okay any and all goodness left on the bottom of the pan should be fully
dissolved and also once this mixture gets hot enough to start simmering
you'll notice it should thicken up nicely and as with all sauces that are
thickened with flour once it does start boiling that's as thick as it's gonna
get and if it's too thick you could always thin out with a little more milk
but this will look just about perfect and then what we'll do once that's
thickened up and is bubbling is go ahead and turn off the heat and stir in a
couple tablespoons of crème fraiche or if you prefer some heavy cream with
maybe a little squeeze of lemon to mimic the acidity from the creme fraiche and
what we'll do is just stir that in and then with the heat off we'll just let
this cool a little bit while we move on to finish prepping our towels which
should be cool enough to handle by now and what we'll do is attempt to pull
that meat out of the show by sticking our thumb underneath like this although
it's probably easier if we take that Center shell off first and be careful do
not waste any scraps of meat okay if there's any meat attached to the shell
pull it off and reserve it and hopefully about getting your finger under like
this most that meats going to come off in one section and that is pretty much
this entire step ok we're removing meat from shell and shell for meat and by the
way if you have trouble peeling that meat away from the shell with your
finger sometimes you just need to start it by scraping with a spoon and then it
should come off but anyway do what you got to do and hopefully you'll end up
with a nice pile of meat like this and of course for our empty now ready to use
shells which will go ahead and transfer onto a sheet pan on top of some crinkled
up foil that I formed some channels to hold the shells in place and then we'll
move back to the cutting board to cut up our tail meat into some bite-sized
pieces and as we slice these in half you always
want to check to see if these need to be deveined and these really didn't have
too much although there were a few little pieces
I'm gonna remove okay so just like when you're cleaning shrimp if you see any
pieces of what we call the vein go ahead and pull that out since that can be a
little bit gritty but other than a few little pieces mine were relatively clean
and then once we've checked for that we'll go ahead and cut this up into like
half-inch pieces and once our lobster meats been cut up we'll go ahead and add
a tool bowl and we'll go ahead and transfer in our sauce which is now
slightly cooled and appearing much thicker but don't worry it's gonna thin
out when it's hot and then we'll finish this up with a pinch of salt and also
more than a couple shakes of cayenne and then last but not least a generous
application of freshly chopped tarragon which I believe to be the ultimate
lobster herb and we'll go ahead and take a spoon and mix this all together
and by the way feel free to customize this filling to your liking I mean you
are after all the Dinah Shore of your Lobster Thermidor and back in Dinah's
day they would add at things like mustard and egg yolks and grier cheese
right back then this would have been a much richer dish but in my opinion if
this mixture is too rich you're sort of hiding that beautiful lobster which is
what I want to be the star of the show so suit yourself and we'll talk about
that on the blog post but I like to stay with a relatively light approach and
then once that's mixed up we'll go ahead and stuff that evenly into our four
shells which I highly recommend doing over the bowl not over the foil since if
you drop some it's really annoying to pick up off the foil and then once we
have that mixture divvied up as evenly as we can we will finish these off by
sprinkling over the following three things first a tiny bit of dry bread
crumb all right just a little touch maybe half a teaspoon per tail followed
by an equally light application of freshly grated parmesan okay just a
little dusting and then last but not least because this is a French dish
after all we will drizzle over a little bit of melted butter
and that's it once that's been applied these are finally ready to roast which
we'll do in the center of a 450 degree oven for about 10 minutes or so or until
nicely browned and our meat is heated through and if you want and I usually do
I'll finish him for about a minute under the broiler so as to get some nice color
on the surface and when they're done they should hopefully look something
like this which i think is just absolutely beautiful and at this point
you'll be happy to know we do not have to let these rest in fact don't we'll go
ahead and serve those up immediately possibly next to a nice salad or one of
these prop salads it looks like a real salad and not only does this look
visually impressive and like it was super hard to make but your guests have
to do virtually no work getting this on a fork and up to their mouth but just
being easy to eat wouldn't really matter if this wasn't also intensely delicious
in fact this was so delicious I totally forgot you're not supposed to push food
onto your fork with your finger so please excuse my atrocious table manners
and I switched and tried to do with a spoon and fork but that didn't feel
right so I went back to the finger and I know
I said i used a relatively light approach here which i did but this is
still relatively rich and decadent and we have just enough that creamy sauce
coating the lobster without overpowering it and covering it up so I just
absolutely loved how this came out but anyway that's it might take on Lobster
Thermidor when it comes to extravagant expensive special occasion recipe ideas
this one is one of my favorites and just between you and me because we're using
frozen lobster tails they're not even really that expensive to make so for all
those reasons and more I really do hope you give these a try soon so head over
to food wishes calm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual
and as always enjoy
you