Why is my raw lobster meat orange?
Chef's answer
Raw lobsters get their distinctive blue-purplish colour from a pigment called astaxanthin. The pigment molecules are pinkish-orange in their free, unbound form, but when they bind to a protein in the lobster's shell, their shape and light-absorbing properties are distorted.
Frequently asked Questions 🎓
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There's no real scientific consensus on whether they feel pain if they're boiled, but it's the most traditional way to do it.
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There's no real scientific consensus on whether they feel pain if they're boiled, but it's the most traditional way to do it.
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So boiling lobsters alive save us from a world of pain, but what about the lobsters? For starters, lobsters don't scream when you boil them. In fact, they lack lungs and don't even have the proper biological equipment to form a scream. What you hear is air and steam escaping from the shells of their simmering suppers.
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Unlike some seafood restaurants, Red Lobster does not boil lobsters alive. Our culinary professionals are trained to humanely end the lobster's life moments before they are cooked so our guests get the freshest, most delicious lobsters..
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Lobsters have always enjoyed a nasty reputation for cannibalism in captivity. When they're caught in traps, Oppenheim says, lobsters will eat those that have just molted and lost their hard shells. And, scientists have found fresh little lobsters inside the stomachs of adults.
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For recipes that call for fully cooked and picked lobster meat boiling is the best approach. In contrast, steaming is more gentle, yielding slightly more tender meat. It preserves a little more flavor and it's more forgiving on the timing front. It's harder to overcook a steamed lobster.
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Anyone who has ever boiled a lobster alive can attest that, when dropped into scalding water, lobsters whip their bodies wildly and scrape the sides of the pot in a desperate attempt to escape. In the journal Science, researcher Gordon Gunter described this method of killing lobsters as "unnecessary torture.".
A few more cooking questions 📍