Lobster and Crab

Unless you have an excellent local fishmonger, to get the freshest, sweetest product you should cook the Crustacea yourself, rather than buying ready-cooked. Lobster is an expensive ingredient, and it is worth eating it at its very best.

However, cooking it yourself means killing it yourself. There is, according to the RSPCA, no known way of killing lobsters absolutely humanely, and, if there is any uncertainty, the animal should have the benefit of the doubt.

Some people suggest electrically stunning them; others recommend putting the lobster into lukewarm salt water and very gradually raising the heat. The short, sharp blow through the nervous system has its advocates too. But in Canada and Maine, lobsters are plunged into an inch or two of fast-boiling water. ‘Live crustaceans die in a few seconds,’ we are told by a number of cookery experts. According to the RSPCA, it can take 2 to 3 minutes, rather than a few seconds, for a lobster to die in boiling water. If a large number of Crustacea are being cooked in a big pot, then it can take much longer because the water will take much longer to come back to the boil.