I’m going to make some simple boiled lobster this weekend. Nothing fancy, just a lobster and a pot of boiling water.
What can I make using the leftover water? I like lobster bisque but that might be too advanced for me. Should I just throw some salt and green onions and garlic into it and drink it as a plain broth?
I’d make seafood stock.
After you cook your lobster, and have removed the meat from the shell, throw the shell and everything back in to the water with celery, carrots, onions, a bay leaf, maybe some thyme, salt and pepper and if you like, other veggies for flavor. Do not use broccoli as that has a bitterness that does not lend itself well to stock. Simmer all that for an hour or two, then strain all the veggies and shells out.
Freeze into portions and then use as a base for soups and sauces whenever you feel like it.
Bisque, btw, is actually quite simple to make. Google for recipes. There’s tons of 'em out there.
Isn’t it a matter of lobbing in some heavy cream? Or something like that. Add in some shrimp, maybe, for a lobster-shrimp bisque.
Heavy cream, a little sherry… I make a roux and a velouté and then add veggies (Carrots, shallots, celery – all of which get strained out) for flavor and then blend/strain until smooth and toss in chunks of crab, lobster, shrimp, whathaveyou at the end. I do it the complicated way because I’ve had really great bisque in restaurants and if you’re trying to duplicate really great bisque, you make it like a chef makes it, which means starting with a roux and a velouté. I got my recipe out of one of the textbooks used at the Culinary Institute of America. Had to learn what a velouté is. (It’s basically a gravy, where you mix your roux with your stock, *if *I understand the textbook correctly. It would be kind of cool if one of the Doper Chefs around here could come in here and correct me if I’m mistaken.)
But there are much simpler ways to make bisque if you aren’t up to putting yourself through all that.
I might add that seafood stock is excellent as a base for chowders (lobster, clam, pick your shellfish), or gumbo.
A blond roux and white stock make a velouté I think. I’m not a chef though, sorry, it would be nice to hear from one.
Lobster is cheap here. I sometimes make a broth and then make lobster risotto. Time consuming but delicious. You can’t go wrong with bisque either.