Butter Poaching (lobster) was a popular French cooking technique to preserve and retain the flavour and the texture of the meat and the veggies. The basic technique of butter poaching is to slow-cook the ingredients in a large batch of butter with low heat. You should keep an eye on the flame to keep the batch NOT get BOILED. The temperature of the mixture should between 160-190F (71-88 Celcius). The correct poaching of lobster meat will make the texture is very crunchy.
Butter poached lobster usually served in a fine dining restaurant. Even the dish is sounds fancy, the process of poaching lobster with butter is so easy to do in the regular kitchen. You just need butter to making this fancy lobster dish. The only problem is,mostly homecooking stlyle can’t apply the generous amount of butter that were used for poaching lobster meat just like in a restaurant (actually this is mostly my dilemma). The lobster meat should be completely drowned with the liquid butter for perfect poaching process.
Many ingredients could be infused within the butter poaching lobster. Basically garlic, shallot and herbs. Today i add some fennel that i’ve purchased on Kem Chick Supermarket. This imported veggies are preety damn expensive, mine was about 300 grams and cost me about 6 USD, it’s tagged with almost twice of the local beef price. Fennel got incredibly crisp texture with a refreshing liquorice like flavour, this just perfect for butter poached lobster!. I add some crushed pink peppercorn too to the poached lobster mixture because pink peppercorn is always fit with seafood. It’s better if you using a salted butter and this make you need to watch the saltiness of the dish, weather you needed to adjust the amount of the salt.
Another important steps for poaching the lobster meat is the preboiled lobster step. Don’t overcooked the lobster meat ! You didn’t want wasting your money for tought and rubbery lobster meat. After boiling the lobster, you MUST drawned the lobster on FREEZE COLD ICY WATER to remove the remaining heat and stop the cooking process. Cut the lobster tail meat into large bite size chunks to preserve te lobster flavour into the table.
Butter Poached Lobster with Fennel and Herbs Recipe:
Ingredients :
- 1 medium size of lobster (mine was about 300 gr spinny lobster)
- 1/2 block of salted butter (1 stick), about 100 gr
- 1 tbsp olive oil (this is needed to prevent the butter burned out)
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1 bird eye chilli, deseeded, finely chopped
- 1/4 cup diced fennel (about 30gr)
- Herbs: fresh thyme, sage and tarragon, finely chopped (i use 1 sprig thyme, 1 sprig tarragon and 2 leaves sage)
- 1 tsp dry cooking wine
- 1/2 tsp lemon juice or rice vinegar
- A pinch of pink peppercorn
- Diced giant sweet pepper and chopped dill weed for garnish
Instruction:
- First you should ‘silent’ your lobster if you dealing with alive lobster, simply insert throughly your knive between the eyes of your lobster or you can put it in icy water for about 5 minutes
- Bring a large pot of water to boil. Simmer the heat and put the lobster. Cover with lid and let it cook for 2-3 minutes.
- Drawn your cooked lobster in icy water to stop the cooking and drained
- Twist your lobster tail and rremove all lobster meat from shell and cut into bite size chunks.
- In a sauce pan, heat up the olive oil into simmer over medium-low heat.
- Whisk in the butter into the pan, add the vinegar and cooking wine, make sure the mixture DID NOT BOILED, otherwise the butter will separate.
- Add the lobster pieces garlic, fennel, chilli, shallot and herbs and pink peppercorn, cook and poached it for 7 minutes, again watch your butter mixture and make sure the mixture DID NOT BOILED
- In case your butter poached lobster mixture come to small boil, just simply remove the sauce pan from the heat and let it cool down and put it back to the stove after that.
- Serve immediately the butter and herbs poached lobster and garnish with dill weed and dice giant sweet pepper.
So beautiful and decadent. It’s amazing how butter can really bring out the lobster’s natural flavor.
This looks absolutely amazing!
Lobster feast? I never had lobster poached in butter…sounds delicious, packed with flavor…yum!
Have a great week ahead Dedy 😀
Dedy, this is an extravagant dish even without the expensive fennel. I’m wondering if you really meant ‘crunchy’ for the lobster texture? I would think that slow poaching would give you a soft texture. I would also prefer to use unsalted butter to better control the saltiness. Fennel and lobster sound like a perfect combo for sure. Another gorgeous upscale dish!
Actually i thought that slow poached lobster would be tender just before i tried it Eva, but the result is contrary…
the lobster got a crunchy texture…..
What a heavenly dish! I’d love it!
Hmmmm . . . you are really an expert in making people hungry, Ded 🙂
I’m a huge fan of the lobster, but not so much the fennel.
just simply substitude the fennel with another veggies…..
iihh dapat aja bumbu kaya gitu disana.. cari di jkt waktu libur ya? apa emang dijual adas di palembang? kudu ke ranchmarket kalu pengen bumbu yang lain kaya gitu, apalagi pink pepercorn..
ini lagi serial udang-lobster dan sodarasodaranya nih.. postinganmu kebanyak gini sekarang..
Dapet fennel di kem chick kak, mahal pun, skilo 200rb-an, klo bli daging dah dapet 2,5 kilo….hehehe
Butter poached lobster is such an elegant dish, Dedy. This is another wonderful dish and recipe.
It loosk very nice,with butter poaching,you never cant be wrong!great work.
This looks and sounds delicious!
What a fantastic recipe and fabulous colours!!
I’ve never heard of butter poaching before! Learn something new every day 🙂 I absolutely love Lobster and this looks delicious.
OMG! Looks absolutely delish!
What a beautiful dish, Dedy ! wow, just wow!
dude, dont compete on indonesian masterchef but go to america or somewhere and compete there ! its really hard to believe these all at first but i guess you did a great job ! keep it going and good luck !
Viva la Bataknese !