How to prepare a cooked lobster

Celebrate your very own Summer of Shellfish at home by preparing a cooked lobster following the expert, step-by-step guidance of our cookery school Head Chef Lecturer, Nick Evans. His 20 years of experience will give you the confidence to master the technique in your own kitchen before serving a Rick Stein style grilled lobster and chips in the sun.

Watch Nick below to discover the steps required to remove the meat from a cooked lobster leaving no claw or leg un-cracked.

Follow our expert guidance

The method of preparing a cooked lobster

1) Put the lobster belly-side down on to a board and make sure none of the legs are tucked underneath. Cut it in half, first through the middle of the head between the eyes. Then turn either the knife or the lobster around and finish cutting it in half through the tail.

2) Open it up and lift out the tail meat from each half.

3) Remove the intestinal tract from the tail meat.

4) Break off the claws and then break them into pieces at the joints. Crack the shells with a knife.

5) Remove the meat from each of the claw sections in as large pieces as possible.

6) Remove the soft greenish tomalley (liver) and any red roe from the head section of the shell with a teaspoon and save to flavour a sauce.  Pull out the
stomach sac and discard.

You can also remove the tail meat in one piece

1) Pull the tail away from the head

2) Turn the tail section over and cut along either side of the flat belly-shell with strong scissors

3) Lift back the flap of shell

4) Lift out the tail meat

5)Remove the intestinal tract either by cutting the tail into thin slices and removing it from each slice with the tip of a small sharp knife or by running the knife down the back of the meat and removing it in one piece.

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