Lobster | New England’s Gifts
(Homarus americanus) Bertha Nunan was the proprietor of Nunan’s Lobster Hut in Cape Porpoise, Maine, from 1974 to 1995. In 1979, we asked Bertha for her advice on cooking lobster, and her words have stood the test of time. Bertha passed away in 2009, but her two sons and their wives—the third generation—still run Nunan’s […]
Lobster
Photo Credit : Glenn/StockFoodPhoto Credit : Glenn/StockFood
(Homarus americanus)
Bertha Nunan was the proprietor of Nunan’s Lobster Hut in Cape Porpoise, Maine, from 1974 to 1995. In 1979, we asked Bertha for her advice on cooking lobster, and her words have stood the test of time. Bertha passed away in 2009, but her two sons and their wives—the third generation—still run Nunan’s Lobster Hut at 9 Mills Road. nunanslobsterhut.com
Photo Credit : Brenda Darroch
The secret to cooking lobsters is not to murder them. Give them a nice, slow, respectable way out. Don’t put them in boiling water, and don’t drown them in too much water. Boiling them in a lot of water just boils their flavor out, and too much water waterlogs them. I put in two inches of water, whether I’m cooking two lobsters or 14. I take a salt container, and with the spout open, I pour it three times around the pot; then, plop! at the end [about 3 teaspoons]. When the water is boiling, put in the lobsters, put the lid on, and steam them for 20 minutes. [That’s for a 1½-pounder; plan on 12–15 minutes for a 1-pounder.] That’s how Grandfather, Captain George Nunan, showed me, and I’ve done it that way ever since.
Amy Traverso
Amy Traverso is the senior food editor at Yankee magazine and co-host of the public television series Weekends with Yankee, a coproduction with WGBH. Previously, she was food editor at Boston magazine and an associate food editor at Sunset magazine. Her work has also been published in The Boston Globe, Saveur, and Travel & Leisure, and she has appeared on Hallmark Home & Family, The Martha Stewart Show, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Amy is the author of The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, which was a finalist for the Julia Child Award for best first-time author and won an IACP Cookbook Award in the “American” category.
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