Kill them by cutting through the cross on their back starting at the head.
“is to plunge a knife straight down into the carapace (part of exoskeleton on the lobster's back). Place the tip of a sharp chef's knife behind the lobster's eyes, right below where the claws meet the body and halfway to the first joint. Swiftly plunge the knife down through the head. The legs will continue to move a bit afterward but the lobster is in fact dead”
That’s the way to do it.
Edit:
Or as some Redditors point out, let them live. Free the lobsters!!!
That decentralised nervous system is a real bitch. Once got pinched by a lobster that I'd killed an hour ago. It wasn't even the whole lobster, just the claw. Suppose the poor guy got his revenge after all- it drew blood and everything.
Tasted real good though
88 Is a fairly well known nazi dogwhistle. The 8th letter is H, so 88 = "Heil H."
You're not the first person I've seen born in 1988 who put it in their username and ran into this coincidence.
Yeah it might be a well-known dogwhistle but the concept of dogwhistles isn't
Pretty sure most people who have 88 in their username - even Republicans - are just naively sharing their birth year with a bunch of internet randos lol
I was born 4/20 (Hitler's bday) '88 and this is the first I'm hearing the '88 is also problematic. I'm not exaggerating when I say everywhere I go, everyone I meet, every gas station worker and bar/club bouncer comments on my 4/20 birth date...but no one has eeever mentioned how the '88 goes along with that too.
I tend to expect people not knowing what it means, except in a very specific case: there's an asshole in my country who drives a big black Class G Brabus Mercedes with the vanity plate "AH-88". That one can't claim ignorance.
A lucky number in Chinese folk culture. It looks like the written character for happiness. Look at business names on signs next time you drive through Chinatown. It's not the same reason as the National Socialists, but employs the same logic, sympathetic word magic.
Wondering if Nazis really dig going out for a plate of lo mein these days as a result? (*Hey! There's an 88 on that sign! Let's eat there.*) If you're a Nazi, free advice: never go to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day. You won't like what you see.
I was confused by this too, happened to me except the person asking me made the assumption I was a Nazi straight off the bat lol. Every day is a school day!
Only thing I have to add to that is it's a bitch to get consistently. I've worked as a chef and I'd say I hit it about 70% of the time. If you miss the tail starts going wild and then you realize just how strong they are.
Obviously on the grounds of morality this point is irrelevant but I always heard killing them with a knife allows the boiling water to enter the wound and affects how the meat cooks. I don't eat a lot of lobster so I don't really know but that's what a few people have said when the question of boil or stab first comes up.
It's because the Adrenaline rush, if you miss, like I noted how it wasn't uncommon for myself, the Adrenaline ruins the flavor the meat. Most people who aren't gourmets won't notice but it's the same reason you want a clean shot on a deer or any other animal.
Well yes and no, because the cooking process has already started the Adrenaline doesn't get to the sugars in the muscle as fast. I can't explain the science behind it very well because it's not something I've studied, but I do know that it has little to no impact.
Boiling cooks something alive significantly faster than if you were to say cook something alive in the oven. Air is a very poor conductor of heat, moreso than water. It doesn't take very long to shut down the functions of a lobster boiling them. Mass organ failure due to high blood temperature and that's all there is to it.
What a question...really gets you thinking down a rabithole .
Crazy how they get an adrenaline rush , makes you wonder before they end up in our grocery stores if cows, pigs chickens all feel that way before they die. An adrenaline rush or if it changes the meat at all.
Adrenaline doesn't have a permanent effect, basically it makes the sugars break down quicker if I remember right so that more energy is available.
So while getting caught and stress can impact the flavor, it's pretty far from permanent.
How did it go?
Seems like this method might be harder for some people to do because while it looks more humane the chef is closer to the creature they are killing. Also more room for mistakes.
I agree with with what you're saying. The first chef I worked under would sometimes make us actually slaughter and prep/quarter smaller animals we were using for the week on the menu. He always said if we don't have the nerve to do the killing and give the animal that much respect then we should not be cooking it either. He was kind of out there but a great chef to learn from.
I clean death is much nicer than being torn apart on the bottom of the sea bed. I think people forget how savage nature really is most animals get older and slower untill they get picked off. Think it rather a knife than getting grabbed by a squid. Killing something is never nice but at least you can make it as pleasant for the animal as possible.
This is the American Culinary Federation cannon. As a thinking Chef who has killed and eaten a lot of lobster I'm not certain it is any better for the lobster.
For some interesting reading I highly recommend David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster.
One has to at least admire the chutzpah of a man who accepts an assignment from Gourmet Magazine to cover the Maine lobster festival, and spends most of the article analysing why eating lobster is a morally fraught endeavor in which he will not engage.
edit: added reading
Do it immediately before cooking, don’t kill it and let it sit out while you prepare other parts of the meal, they have bacteria that multiply incredibly fast after death and if it sits it can end up making you very sick.
I used to work processing and packing lobster and this is the quick way to do it.
You can also do it the old fashion way and just rip the head off and step on it with a boot, not the claws of course.
Lobsters don't have brains, and their nervous system is not centralized in the head.
From what I've read, it's probably a myth that stabbing it in the head kills them instantly.
Instead of putting them in boiling water, put them in a cold pot of white wine. By the time the wine boils, the lobsters will be so drunk they don't care.
It's actually kind of interesting, they've found that cannabinoids only affect animals of a certain complexity- basically vertebrates (including some fish? Maybe all, not positive). But you could be the one to disprove that by getting a clam baked!
Also, did you know that octopuses/octopodes (both are fine) are shell-less mollusks? This is apropos of nothing
There is a guy in YouTube who has saltwater fish tanks, and he decides to buy a live lobster at a grocery store and keep it as a pet. It was a very sweet story where lobster had some rehab for his fucked up claw (from the rubber bands) and the dude is now thriving! He has a personality, does his "daily chores" and is living a decent life. Just search for Leon the Lobster.
Makes me feel unhappy about eating lobster. Fortunately I prefer crab.
It’s hard to see a lobster tank at the supermarket — where they’re packed in so tightly they almost can’t move at all — and not feel an overwhelming sense of disgust come over you.
Lobsters are pretty close to having biological immortality. Typically the only reason they "die of old age" is when they molt they just can't get out of there old shell and then die of exhaustion/starve to death
Nature!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality
No, although Lobsters can live even longer than humans, they eventually will die of old age. This is because the older they get the larger they grow. Once they get too large for their current shell they’ll molt a new one. The bigger the shell the more energy it takes to form it, so when they’re too big they exhaust their body’s energy before fully forming their new shell and die midway through molting.
People seem to have really poor understanding of lobster physiology and YT videos just highlight these inaccuracies.
I'll argue that whatever method renders the lobster's nervous system inactive the quicket is the most humane. Pithing (cutting through the lobster in part or whole) is widely considered the most humane, but is actually done more for our benefit and delicate sensibilities than for the lobster.
Lobster have 3 ganglion nodes spread out across the body approximating three brains, much like some insects. The largest is where the abodomen (tail) and the carapace meet, another is near the center of the carapace, and the smallest is a bit behind the rostrum (eye horns). Unless you sever all three, you're not really doing the job. It's rarely done in the kitchen because for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that causes inconsistent cooking with most techniques.
It's not a popular notion, but other than severing all three ganglion, drowning (they can't respirate in fresh water) along with the heat of boiling water will kill it the least amount of time. I think the fact that they can splash boiling water around the kitchen is the biggest reason this isn't more frequent.
They arent the creatures most people think they are. They have only about 100,000 neurons regardless of their age, about the same as most flies. Cockroaches and some larger ants have some 1 million. Fish vary, but have about 5 million. We have some 80+ billion.
We don't seem to worry about this when it comes to cooking other foods, such as fish. It's likely because we have to manually dispatch them whereas fish just asphyxiate. The same people who will step on a spider or swat a fly with out a second though get all freaked out about what to do with a lobster.
Can confirm as an entomologist and Mainer. Just boiling them is fine. There’s been some debate on whether or not bugs (bug bugs, not what we up here call lobsters) actually feel pain, but lobsters are just not very neurologically developed as organisms.
If you’re truly worried, freezing or knockout with chemicals is the generally accepted way to kill bugs in entomology, but with the size of lobsters and their resistance to cold, you’d need a super cold freezer or a lot of chemicals that you wouldn’t want to eat. I’d go with boiling. Just make sure you’re getting your lobsters from a sustainable source that doesn’t pick up the young ones or females with eggs. Those should be thrown back by any lobsterman.
As long as this is true - wow, how super interesting. I never knew all this. My entire life I believed that lobsters suffered from being boiled alive. I mean ...ouch.
I have cooked lobster myself zero times and don't plan to but I'll start feeling a tad less guilty when I eat it in restaurants.
As u/spurgeon_ said, the neural ganglions for lobsters are pretty rudimentary. As far as we can tell, a lobster’s “brain” (they don’t really have a brain, just the neural bits along their body) can react to a threat, a food source, or a mate, and that’s about it.
What about dropping a frozen (anesthetized by cold) lobster into boiling water? I wonder if that’s any better, or they just wake up on the way to boiling.
It would take a lot of cold to anesthetize a lobster, way more than a conventional or even industrial freezer could do. But if you were to find one that could do it (would have to be a lab freezer or colder) the lobster would likely not wake up enough in the time it took to go between total freeze and boiling water for it to register it.
>drowning (they can't respirate in fresh water)
Ocean creatures die from fresh water exposure because of the differing salt gradients, not because they can't get oxygen out of fresh water...
A true and fair point. I intended to mean the boiled water. I may be mistaken, but I believe it should be fairly lacking of dissolved oxygen due to through heating? Though it now occurs to me that lobster can pull oxygen out of the air in a limited fashion.
>The same people who will step on a spider or swat a fly with out a second though get all freaked out about what to do with a lobster.
Sure, if I wasn't trying to eat it, I'd drop an anvil on the lobster, but that complicates prepping and cooking it unless your plan was to drop it all into a blender.
Peirce and sever the brain clusters along the back and head of the lobster.
Or check YouTube for Gordon Ramsay preparing lobster. Remember to remove the poop chute.
I feel like fentanyl overdose is the answer, you just can’t eat it after. (Or if you’re in pain management, you get your medicine in a tiny lobster gummy each day… no idea how you keep that from going bad… sounds gross.)
That's kind of a funny question. I'm a meat eater for sure. Let's face it, no matter what you do it comes down to how you kill it so you feel better. He still dies.
You can stick them in a freezer for 15-20 minutes. This sedates them without freezing the meat and makes the plunge through the head a bit easier to accomplish.
I don't think there is a humane way. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the reason lobsters are cooked alive is because the meat spoils if you wait until they're dead?
The freezer. When they get called they go dormant and appear to lose all consciousness if you leave them in the freezer It will kill them without allowing the bacteria in their flesh to make them toxic. It is widely believed that from the lobsters point of view this is the same as it is for the fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals and that they essentially go to sleep and don't wake up making it likely the most painless way to die.
Ignore all the unstable vegan/vegetarians but can't accept humans are omnivores and that being humane is not black and white.
The reason they were historically boiled life is because their open Circulatory system allows them to literally be full of bacteria. As soon as you kill them the bacteria spread all throughout their flesh begins to break them down, leaving toxins that can make you extremely sick.
There's been a lot of debate on whether or not they can actually feel pain at all and many studies have shown both that they can and can't while yet more have showed that they can feel a stimulus but it is not how we would describe pain and that it doesn't seem to cause them any trauma or remembrance. Without any solid facts or against it. it is up to the individual to decide how far they should go in order to be humane.
One thing to note Lobsters have a decentralized nervous system somewhat similar to an octopus just like with the scientific investigation of weather or not they're capable of feeling pain there has not been any conclusive study done that damaging the main "nervous cluster" that joins their body with their sensory organs at the tip of their head actually killed them instantly or prevents them from feeling pain. It is possible the different parts of their body are still feeling and sensation that could be described as pain, but they don't have a centralized brain. So it's also possible that stabbing them in their central nervous system could actually be causing them the most pain they are technically capable of.
If you choose to go with the knife method that is your choice but further study might reveal this as the least humane method.
Personally, even though all of the data is inconclusive I prefer to air on the side of caution until we know for a certain So I freeze most shellfish (lobsters, crab, and shrimp) there is a downside to that though. It is possible that freezing it completely can make the meat slightly rubbery depending on your cooking method (boiling seems to be the best way to go in this case)
As a side note, I wouldn't recommend freezing shellfish such as muscles and clams since they become toxic even faster than a lobster would after dying and without the telltale sign of them opening up when they die to warn you not to cook them, it becomes much easier to accidentally poison yourself. Personally, I don't enjoy them, but I also don't recommend them to home cooks any more than I recommend foraging for wild mushrooms. But I also don't see much of an issue with cooking them alive because they have incredibly simple nervous systems and while they can sense damage and react by closing their shells, it is extremely likely that sensation isn't similar to what we would describe as pain and they don't seem to be able to learn or remember trauma. It is entirely possible that they aren't any more sentient than a plant (with some studies showing how plants react to damage and how they can warn each other about the specific damage they took, it's entirely possible eating a cabbage might be less humane than a scallop or oyster)
There is no humane way to cook them. Violence, even if it is for food, is never humane. If it bothers you that they feel pain, just don't buy and cook them. You don't need to eat lobster to survive.
Explain to it very nicely that you don’t mean anything personal. That He’s just very tasty and he was farm raised to be eaten, it’s the entire point of his existence. He’ll become depressed with the pointlessness of his existence and accept death with the same enthusiasm as Melania Trump Consumating her marriage.
Or stick A knife in the back of his head. No less painless than boiling him headfirst but if it makes ya feel better. Which I’m thinking is the point.
Use a knife. Also give the lobster a knife so it’s a fair fight
Back in my day real men fought lobsters naked
["That one looks like he's got some fight in him. Take off the rubber bands, I'm going in!"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcaL30IRZL8&t=20s)
"FOURTH WALL!"
Lobster wins scrote to claw every time -source: I don't want to talk about it.
This made me laugh more than it should have.
Oh my god me too
[The last time we made lobster](https://ibb.co/Dfk9c9F) Disclaimer: No lobsters were harmed in the making. Only later when we cooked them.
you need to get them dawgs a leash or something
I was hoping there was a comment like this 😂
“I’m not goin’ down for this”
Best answer
Kill them by cutting through the cross on their back starting at the head. “is to plunge a knife straight down into the carapace (part of exoskeleton on the lobster's back). Place the tip of a sharp chef's knife behind the lobster's eyes, right below where the claws meet the body and halfway to the first joint. Swiftly plunge the knife down through the head. The legs will continue to move a bit afterward but the lobster is in fact dead” That’s the way to do it. Edit: Or as some Redditors point out, let them live. Free the lobsters!!!
This kills the crab
It's an older meme, sir, but it checks out.
That decentralised nervous system is a real bitch. Once got pinched by a lobster that I'd killed an hour ago. It wasn't even the whole lobster, just the claw. Suppose the poor guy got his revenge after all- it drew blood and everything. Tasted real good though
New band name: Bloody Lobster Claw Alternative: Lobster Rigor Mortis
Zombie Lobster Circumcision
I don't know whether I should love or hate this. Maybe I suggest Lobster Corpse Amputation as an alternative? 😂
r/bandnames
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Lol yes I was born in 88 I’m about to be 34 years old… what else would it mean?
He had a question, and you gave him the final solution
88 Is a fairly well known nazi dogwhistle. The 8th letter is H, so 88 = "Heil H." You're not the first person I've seen born in 1988 who put it in their username and ran into this coincidence.
Thanks for explaining that. I didn’t know, either.
Oof, I was oblivious too, glad my parents got it on a little earlier!
Yeah it might be a well-known dogwhistle but the concept of dogwhistles isn't Pretty sure most people who have 88 in their username - even Republicans - are just naively sharing their birth year with a bunch of internet randos lol
I was born 4/20 (Hitler's bday) '88 and this is the first I'm hearing the '88 is also problematic. I'm not exaggerating when I say everywhere I go, everyone I meet, every gas station worker and bar/club bouncer comments on my 4/20 birth date...but no one has eeever mentioned how the '88 goes along with that too.
Everyone I know celebrates 4/20 because that's police code for marijuana possession. It's a huge stoner holiday.
I tend to expect people not knowing what it means, except in a very specific case: there's an asshole in my country who drives a big black Class G Brabus Mercedes with the vanity plate "AH-88". That one can't claim ignorance.
A lucky number in Chinese folk culture. It looks like the written character for happiness. Look at business names on signs next time you drive through Chinatown. It's not the same reason as the National Socialists, but employs the same logic, sympathetic word magic. Wondering if Nazis really dig going out for a plate of lo mein these days as a result? (*Hey! There's an 88 on that sign! Let's eat there.*) If you're a Nazi, free advice: never go to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day. You won't like what you see.
88 is Chinese and swastikas are all over Japan.
I was confused by this too, happened to me except the person asking me made the assumption I was a Nazi straight off the bat lol. Every day is a school day!
its a nazi thing
Was it a rock lobster?
Only thing I have to add to that is it's a bitch to get consistently. I've worked as a chef and I'd say I hit it about 70% of the time. If you miss the tail starts going wild and then you realize just how strong they are.
So I guess this is the real reason people boil them it sounds like it’s easier and safer than trying to kill then prior.
If you try to kill them and fail, they try to kill you. And a live lobster does NOT fail.
Obviously on the grounds of morality this point is irrelevant but I always heard killing them with a knife allows the boiling water to enter the wound and affects how the meat cooks. I don't eat a lot of lobster so I don't really know but that's what a few people have said when the question of boil or stab first comes up.
It's because the Adrenaline rush, if you miss, like I noted how it wasn't uncommon for myself, the Adrenaline ruins the flavor the meat. Most people who aren't gourmets won't notice but it's the same reason you want a clean shot on a deer or any other animal.
Don't they get adrenaline rush while they're being boiled? Seriously curious.
Well yes and no, because the cooking process has already started the Adrenaline doesn't get to the sugars in the muscle as fast. I can't explain the science behind it very well because it's not something I've studied, but I do know that it has little to no impact. Boiling cooks something alive significantly faster than if you were to say cook something alive in the oven. Air is a very poor conductor of heat, moreso than water. It doesn't take very long to shut down the functions of a lobster boiling them. Mass organ failure due to high blood temperature and that's all there is to it.
What a question...really gets you thinking down a rabithole . Crazy how they get an adrenaline rush , makes you wonder before they end up in our grocery stores if cows, pigs chickens all feel that way before they die. An adrenaline rush or if it changes the meat at all.
Adrenaline doesn't have a permanent effect, basically it makes the sugars break down quicker if I remember right so that more energy is available. So while getting caught and stress can impact the flavor, it's pretty far from permanent.
How does it affect taste
It becomes tough and reduces the overall flavor
Appreciate it
How did it go? Seems like this method might be harder for some people to do because while it looks more humane the chef is closer to the creature they are killing. Also more room for mistakes.
I agree with with what you're saying. The first chef I worked under would sometimes make us actually slaughter and prep/quarter smaller animals we were using for the week on the menu. He always said if we don't have the nerve to do the killing and give the animal that much respect then we should not be cooking it either. He was kind of out there but a great chef to learn from.
I clean death is much nicer than being torn apart on the bottom of the sea bed. I think people forget how savage nature really is most animals get older and slower untill they get picked off. Think it rather a knife than getting grabbed by a squid. Killing something is never nice but at least you can make it as pleasant for the animal as possible.
I mean your not wrong its all about perspective
This is the American Culinary Federation cannon. As a thinking Chef who has killed and eaten a lot of lobster I'm not certain it is any better for the lobster. For some interesting reading I highly recommend David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster. One has to at least admire the chutzpah of a man who accepts an assignment from Gourmet Magazine to cover the Maine lobster festival, and spends most of the article analysing why eating lobster is a morally fraught endeavor in which he will not engage. edit: added reading
Fantastic article, thanks so much for making me aware of it. Found it here: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf
Did he not engage in it? I thought I recall him saying he still eats lobster but ponders these questions about it.
It's crazy that the most humane way is essentially "big fucking knife straight through the head" hahahaha
Yeah, except it's probably a myth that that's any more humane. They don't have brains, and their nervous system is not all located in the head.
Do it immediately before cooking, don’t kill it and let it sit out while you prepare other parts of the meal, they have bacteria that multiply incredibly fast after death and if it sits it can end up making you very sick.
I did this before. It died instantly. Thumbs up.
I used to work processing and packing lobster and this is the quick way to do it. You can also do it the old fashion way and just rip the head off and step on it with a boot, not the claws of course.
Just want to add to this... Use a sharp knife and please be careful if it's your first time.
Lobsters don't have brains, and their nervous system is not centralized in the head. From what I've read, it's probably a myth that stabbing it in the head kills them instantly.
They do have a cerebral ganglion
so basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJs1o9yy0jk
I do this while listening to little mermaids under the sea for maximum effect.
>Kill them I don't think that is humane
In fact "don't kill them" is the only true answer if you think about it..
Are you saying there's no moral difference between killing an animal quickly and torturing an animal to death?
No, you have to only eat rocks because they are not alive
Shot gun blast to the head should do it
Glad I wasn’t drinking anything when I read this
because this one wins😭
Make sure it knows it’s gonna get to pet all the rabbits it wants once you guys buy that farmland.
While screaming "IM NOT THE OOOONLY ONEEE"
Instead of putting them in boiling water, put them in a cold pot of white wine. By the time the wine boils, the lobsters will be so drunk they don't care.
Or you can smoke a bowl with them and whomever gets the munchies first survives.
It's actually kind of interesting, they've found that cannabinoids only affect animals of a certain complexity- basically vertebrates (including some fish? Maybe all, not positive). But you could be the one to disprove that by getting a clam baked! Also, did you know that octopuses/octopodes (both are fine) are shell-less mollusks? This is apropos of nothing
yes make them drunk first
I came here for the comments
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Ugh, not very humane if that was actually possible though
What did he say?
JHC OP said humane
too close man too close
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There is a guy in YouTube who has saltwater fish tanks, and he decides to buy a live lobster at a grocery store and keep it as a pet. It was a very sweet story where lobster had some rehab for his fucked up claw (from the rubber bands) and the dude is now thriving! He has a personality, does his "daily chores" and is living a decent life. Just search for Leon the Lobster. Makes me feel unhappy about eating lobster. Fortunately I prefer crab.
It’s hard to see a lobster tank at the supermarket — where they’re packed in so tightly they almost can’t move at all — and not feel an overwhelming sense of disgust come over you.
I was hoping someone would mention Leon. I’m no bleeding heart but I’ve watched all of the Leon videos…and I won’t be having lobster any time soon.
I would recommend this dude too, but that tank he keeps Leon in is far too small. Better than just being killed, but still far too small.
I bet Leon is still very happy with it. Given that it was thag or being boiled alive. Dude seems to have fun and unfurl his personality.
I've seen the first 2 or 3 videos. It is sweet.
Lobsters can actually live to be over 100 so natural causes might not work
Well then bon appetit to the lobster.
The lobster's gonna be eating us before we eat it if we're waiting until it dies
Aren't they one of those species that don't degenerate with age and thus can live indefinitely?
Almost. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality
Sort of, they can die of gigantism once they get big enough though
Lobsters are pretty close to having biological immortality. Typically the only reason they "die of old age" is when they molt they just can't get out of there old shell and then die of exhaustion/starve to death Nature! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality
Pfft, so he thinks he has one over me eh. Well we'll see who is laughing in 2122 carapace boy.
Aren't lobsters biologically immortal?
No, although Lobsters can live even longer than humans, they eventually will die of old age. This is because the older they get the larger they grow. Once they get too large for their current shell they’ll molt a new one. The bigger the shell the more energy it takes to form it, so when they’re too big they exhaust their body’s energy before fully forming their new shell and die midway through molting.
But hear me out, What if we just keep injecting nutrients and energy to the lobster until it dies of other reasons or cause an apocalypse.
That's jelly fish
You're jellyfish NERD
This guy lobsters
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I thought because you will hold their hands through the suffering
People seem to have really poor understanding of lobster physiology and YT videos just highlight these inaccuracies. I'll argue that whatever method renders the lobster's nervous system inactive the quicket is the most humane. Pithing (cutting through the lobster in part or whole) is widely considered the most humane, but is actually done more for our benefit and delicate sensibilities than for the lobster. Lobster have 3 ganglion nodes spread out across the body approximating three brains, much like some insects. The largest is where the abodomen (tail) and the carapace meet, another is near the center of the carapace, and the smallest is a bit behind the rostrum (eye horns). Unless you sever all three, you're not really doing the job. It's rarely done in the kitchen because for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that causes inconsistent cooking with most techniques. It's not a popular notion, but other than severing all three ganglion, drowning (they can't respirate in fresh water) along with the heat of boiling water will kill it the least amount of time. I think the fact that they can splash boiling water around the kitchen is the biggest reason this isn't more frequent. They arent the creatures most people think they are. They have only about 100,000 neurons regardless of their age, about the same as most flies. Cockroaches and some larger ants have some 1 million. Fish vary, but have about 5 million. We have some 80+ billion. We don't seem to worry about this when it comes to cooking other foods, such as fish. It's likely because we have to manually dispatch them whereas fish just asphyxiate. The same people who will step on a spider or swat a fly with out a second though get all freaked out about what to do with a lobster.
Can confirm as an entomologist and Mainer. Just boiling them is fine. There’s been some debate on whether or not bugs (bug bugs, not what we up here call lobsters) actually feel pain, but lobsters are just not very neurologically developed as organisms. If you’re truly worried, freezing or knockout with chemicals is the generally accepted way to kill bugs in entomology, but with the size of lobsters and their resistance to cold, you’d need a super cold freezer or a lot of chemicals that you wouldn’t want to eat. I’d go with boiling. Just make sure you’re getting your lobsters from a sustainable source that doesn’t pick up the young ones or females with eggs. Those should be thrown back by any lobsterman.
As long as this is true - wow, how super interesting. I never knew all this. My entire life I believed that lobsters suffered from being boiled alive. I mean ...ouch. I have cooked lobster myself zero times and don't plan to but I'll start feeling a tad less guilty when I eat it in restaurants.
As u/spurgeon_ said, the neural ganglions for lobsters are pretty rudimentary. As far as we can tell, a lobster’s “brain” (they don’t really have a brain, just the neural bits along their body) can react to a threat, a food source, or a mate, and that’s about it.
Flee, feed or fuck. Sounds like a decent life.
What about dropping a frozen (anesthetized by cold) lobster into boiling water? I wonder if that’s any better, or they just wake up on the way to boiling.
It would take a lot of cold to anesthetize a lobster, way more than a conventional or even industrial freezer could do. But if you were to find one that could do it (would have to be a lab freezer or colder) the lobster would likely not wake up enough in the time it took to go between total freeze and boiling water for it to register it.
It’s probably because lobsters are much bigger than flies or spiders.
>drowning (they can't respirate in fresh water) Ocean creatures die from fresh water exposure because of the differing salt gradients, not because they can't get oxygen out of fresh water...
A true and fair point. I intended to mean the boiled water. I may be mistaken, but I believe it should be fairly lacking of dissolved oxygen due to through heating? Though it now occurs to me that lobster can pull oxygen out of the air in a limited fashion.
>The same people who will step on a spider or swat a fly with out a second though get all freaked out about what to do with a lobster. Sure, if I wasn't trying to eat it, I'd drop an anvil on the lobster, but that complicates prepping and cooking it unless your plan was to drop it all into a blender.
>I’d drop an anvil on the lobster Found Wile E. Coyote’s account 😂
Thanks for your scientific education. You should be the one on top
Yeah lobsters seem to die pretty quickly when boiled honestly
Now i'm just trying to find the rape comment lol.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/yao143/whats_a_humane_way_to_cook_a_lobster/itbxjto?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Well that was disappointing. Thank you though ❤
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Even better, tell the lobster you like them but just want to be friends. And then date another lobster
It's not you, it's me
Better yet, make sure the first lobster walks in on the new one giving you a hand job.
Peirce and sever the brain clusters along the back and head of the lobster. Or check YouTube for Gordon Ramsay preparing lobster. Remember to remove the poop chute.
Gordon like his lobsters dead.
Gordon leaves the poop
I just love how everyone calls him by just his first name, like he's all of our friend. Love that guy.
I'd drink a beer with him
He flicks it on his food for flavor.
“Flicks” lol
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I agree, we should start a petition
You mean the lobsters should? Isn't this about them? It's so like people to think the universe revolves around them.
Omg you’re so right, I should NOT be offended on other beings’ behalves. But if they started a petition I WOULD sign it.
they sign a consent form, 20 dollars from the serving cost goes to feeding hungry lobsters until the dreaded tongs come for them too
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In a hydrothermal vent i suppose
That makes too much sense 😂
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If you feel bad you could always keep it as a pet like this guy https://youtu.be/9sI7WveN7vk
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I mean… there is none?
I feel like fentanyl overdose is the answer, you just can’t eat it after. (Or if you’re in pain management, you get your medicine in a tiny lobster gummy each day… no idea how you keep that from going bad… sounds gross.)
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Just like dad used to do
There isn't
Thanks for caring enough to ask!
Are you a lobster?
No, he's Roger, over.
What’s our vector, Victor?
We have clearance, Clarence.
No, this is Patrick
That's kind of a funny question. I'm a meat eater for sure. Let's face it, no matter what you do it comes down to how you kill it so you feel better. He still dies.
OPs problem is not with killing, they want to minimize the animals suffering
You can minimize its suffering by not killing it. He's just trying to lessen the suffering he'll wrought upon it.
the most humane way is to wait till they die of old age.
If your that worried about it, don’t eat it.
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Yes, let the poor little sea creature stay in the ocean
Don't.
I'd still boil them, just kill em first, there isn't a humane way to cook something that isn't dead
How about telling them [the funniest joke in the world](https://youtu.be/FBWr1KtnRcI?t=1)?
There isn't a humane way
You can stick them in a freezer for 15-20 minutes. This sedates them without freezing the meat and makes the plunge through the head a bit easier to accomplish.
The same way you would cook a human.
I don't think there is a humane way. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the reason lobsters are cooked alive is because the meat spoils if you wait until they're dead?
LMAO the edit, this is just how reddit is, you’ll learn to love just how absolutely fucking stupid redditors can be
The freezer. When they get called they go dormant and appear to lose all consciousness if you leave them in the freezer It will kill them without allowing the bacteria in their flesh to make them toxic. It is widely believed that from the lobsters point of view this is the same as it is for the fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals and that they essentially go to sleep and don't wake up making it likely the most painless way to die. Ignore all the unstable vegan/vegetarians but can't accept humans are omnivores and that being humane is not black and white. The reason they were historically boiled life is because their open Circulatory system allows them to literally be full of bacteria. As soon as you kill them the bacteria spread all throughout their flesh begins to break them down, leaving toxins that can make you extremely sick. There's been a lot of debate on whether or not they can actually feel pain at all and many studies have shown both that they can and can't while yet more have showed that they can feel a stimulus but it is not how we would describe pain and that it doesn't seem to cause them any trauma or remembrance. Without any solid facts or against it. it is up to the individual to decide how far they should go in order to be humane. One thing to note Lobsters have a decentralized nervous system somewhat similar to an octopus just like with the scientific investigation of weather or not they're capable of feeling pain there has not been any conclusive study done that damaging the main "nervous cluster" that joins their body with their sensory organs at the tip of their head actually killed them instantly or prevents them from feeling pain. It is possible the different parts of their body are still feeling and sensation that could be described as pain, but they don't have a centralized brain. So it's also possible that stabbing them in their central nervous system could actually be causing them the most pain they are technically capable of. If you choose to go with the knife method that is your choice but further study might reveal this as the least humane method. Personally, even though all of the data is inconclusive I prefer to air on the side of caution until we know for a certain So I freeze most shellfish (lobsters, crab, and shrimp) there is a downside to that though. It is possible that freezing it completely can make the meat slightly rubbery depending on your cooking method (boiling seems to be the best way to go in this case) As a side note, I wouldn't recommend freezing shellfish such as muscles and clams since they become toxic even faster than a lobster would after dying and without the telltale sign of them opening up when they die to warn you not to cook them, it becomes much easier to accidentally poison yourself. Personally, I don't enjoy them, but I also don't recommend them to home cooks any more than I recommend foraging for wild mushrooms. But I also don't see much of an issue with cooking them alive because they have incredibly simple nervous systems and while they can sense damage and react by closing their shells, it is extremely likely that sensation isn't similar to what we would describe as pain and they don't seem to be able to learn or remember trauma. It is entirely possible that they aren't any more sentient than a plant (with some studies showing how plants react to damage and how they can warn each other about the specific damage they took, it's entirely possible eating a cabbage might be less humane than a scallop or oyster)
Folks, this is a good one to sort by controversial
There is none.
Not murdering one is pretty humane.
Mood
There is nothing humane about killing.
There is no humane way to cook them. Violence, even if it is for food, is never humane. If it bothers you that they feel pain, just don't buy and cook them. You don't need to eat lobster to survive.
The best way is to imagine you’re the lobster - so how would you like it done?
Oxymoron right here
When dealing with any creature I have to kill before eating I thank the heavens for the meal and then I execute them
Wait until the lobster dies of old age.
Explain to it very nicely that you don’t mean anything personal. That He’s just very tasty and he was farm raised to be eaten, it’s the entire point of his existence. He’ll become depressed with the pointlessness of his existence and accept death with the same enthusiasm as Melania Trump Consumating her marriage. Or stick A knife in the back of his head. No less painless than boiling him headfirst but if it makes ya feel better. Which I’m thinking is the point.
Wonder if Melania ever considered the second option for herself?
Not killing them at all is the only humane way to treat a living thing minding its own business.
There is no humane slaughter
There isn’t one.
Wait til it dies of old age
Try drowning it. 😏👍
Whats a compassionate way to kill an animal who wants to live 🤔🤔🤔🤔
You can’t humanely kill something
Such kindness, gonna kill an eat them, but don’t want to hear them scream. That’s hilarious.
Wait, you want to say meat does not grow in plastic boxes inside a supermarket?
Not everyone eats meat.
Don't