Is Bigger Lobster Better?

This thing is absolutely incredible. Is bigger actually better? Today we're going to find out.

This is an absolutely massive main lobster. Its claw is bigger than my hand. It's hard to believe that this really used to be prison food.

Not only prison food, but main lobsters were also used as fish bait. In the late 1800s to early 1900s is when main lobsters started to become known as exotic coastal table fair and it became a little bit of a status symbol and the price began to increase from there. You absolutely do not want to get pinched by this crusher claw.

When it comes to the northern lobster market, 3 to 5 lb cold water lobsters are absolutely huge lobsters. This is a massive lobster. These joints are often just a tiny little piece of meat.

It looks like the joint on this guy is going to be an entire meal in itself. Often there's not enough meat in the legs to be worth it in main lobsters. On this guy, these legs are absolutely humongous.

Look how much brighter it is on the bottom. Look at the blues underneath. And it's absolutely gorgeous.

And the reason why it's so much brighter on the bottom than the top, the bottom doesn't get any sunlight. All right, it's time to find out how much this lobster actually weighs. We've got our scale that is inspected and approved for accuracy by the Department of Agriculture.

That's important to know. You don't want to be watching these swindlers on the internet making you think their lobsters are bigger than they are. But holy smokes, look at that thing.

Look at the underside of it. Absolutely gorgeous specimen. And that right there is a 10.

7 lb main lobster. We're going to be comparing taste and texture from this massive main lobster to normal size main lobsters. This looks super small in comparison, but this is probably around a pound and a quarter.

And that is a perfect meal for one. Drp them down. And 1.

22. All right. For a 10.

69 69lb main lobster. We needed a really big pot. Be careful.

These things are dangerous. Absolute beast of an animal. I mean, look at just how incredible this specimen is.

Thank you so much for feeding us, my friend. All right, fun fact. When you hear that noise coming out of lobsters when they're going into boiling water, that is not a lobster screaming.

Not sure how that became a thing. spread around the internet. That is just steam escaping from the shell.

This guy's going to take 35 minutes. So, we're going to get another pot of water going to cook the smaller one while we've got the bigger one cooking. In a pot this size, it's going to take a lot of water, which means you're going to need a lot of salt.

Every gallon of water is going to take about a/4 cup of salt. All right, now that there's 10 minutes left, it's time to go in with our little chick. This is our pound and a quarter lobster right here, and he's only going to take 10 minutes.

All right, it took a minute for him to come back to a boil, so we're right around the 37 minute mark, which should be perfectly cooked for our absolute colossal cold water lobster. All right, our chick is ready as well. All right, we're running into the walk-in refrigerator to cool these down, but I just want you guys to see real quick what a 1 and a/4 pounder lobster looks next to our 10.

69 lb lobster. He's not even the size of that claw. Absolutely insane.

We're in our walk-in refrigerator. We're going to let this cool down for a little while and then we're going to do the final taste test to see what the textural and flavor difference is between a pound and a quarter lobster and a 10 and 1/2 lb lobster. All right, we have got our beautiful pound and a quarter lobster.

And then we got our absolute giant lobster right here. This is the lobster she told you not to worry about. I am so excited to try this massive main lobster.

I've never had a cold water lobster this big. First thing we're going to do is we're going to try our control group. A perfectly cooked one and a/4 lb lobster.

We're going to rip the tail off, rip the claws off. And we save these heads. You can use them for soups, stocks, broths, fists, all kinds of different things.

Try your best when you're eating lobster to use every drop, every part of the animal. Dip the tip of your knife at the base of the tail. Then use your palm, push forward, and we got it.

Absolutely perfectly cooked lobster right there. It looks beautiful. All that delicious cold water fat there.

That green stuff. You can peel it off if you want, but it's not going to hurt you. If they still serve this in prison, I might go on purpose.

Can you believe they used to use this as bait in fish traps? They would take pole live lobsters, kill them, and put them in fish traps just to attract cod. Now, the market value of this is way more than cod.

And I can see why. Now, we're going to go for the tail of our enormous lobster. Look at that.

Crunch down. Let's see what we got here. You see a side byside comparison from our chick.

Looks like we got a perfect cook on it. I'm super curious. See the textural difference of a lobster this big.

Look at all those beautiful fats in there. We're just going to go straight for it. Woah.

I honestly was not expecting that at all. We don't know about the claws yet, but the tail meat is definitely chewier, but it is way more flavorful. And I actually really like the flavor of this giant lobster.

Look, no ifs or buts about it. This is definitely chewier than the small lobster. If you asked me if I wanted to eat three of these or one of these, texturally, I would take this all day, every day.

But flavor-wise, I actually really enjoy the flavor of this massive lobster. Does me enjoying the flavor more outweigh the benefit of the textural difference? At least for the tail.

We haven't tried the claws yet. I'm really excited to find out about that. But so far for the tails, I would say that the fullbodied flavor of this massive main lobster is not worth the tradeoff for the textural difference from this to the small one.

But with all of that being said, if you take the chewier, larger, more flavorful giant tail and you chop it up and make a salad or a different dish with it, it's going to really help with the texture. And you're probably not going to notice how chewy it is because it's broken up. We're going to go for our pound and a quarter pincher claw control.

Pincher claw from our small lobster. Oh my god. So moist, so tender, so sweet.

It is hard just to break the knuckles off this massive thing. Look at that. Jeez.

We're back at the seafood market to make lobster salad for the crew. This thing is tough. Look at all of that cold water lobster fat.

I'm sure there's something you can do with that to not waste it. I'm not sure what. You can let me know in the comments what you do with lobster fat cuz there's plenty of it to go around.

Look at that. I wish I didn't already eat the smaller one. That way I can show them to you side by side because the smaller one would have been like this in comparison.

But let's uh let's give it a go. Okay. Because claws on main lobsters are already a softer texture.

The firmer texture on this colossal claw isn't too tough at all. It's actually really good. I've never had a main lobster claw that's this big before.

I actually really like the texture of a main lobster claw this big. They're both really good, but totally different. This is a lot firmer texturally, but it's not tough like the tail kind of was.

Now, time to try the Crusher claw. I am so curious to what this claw weighs. We're going to compare this claw from a $250 lobster and compare it to this claw, a $15 lobster, and see the difference.

Is 2 1/2 lb. That is absolutely insane. All right, I want to know what the claw without the joints is.

With the knuckles, it was 2 1/2 lb. That one single lobster claw is almost 2 lb. For comparison, we got.

16 lb. Just the claw itself. 12.

There's our beautiful claw meat from our pound and a quarter lobster. It really is hard to beat the texture of these smaller lobsters. All right, that was delicious.

We knew it was going to be. I'm actually really curious how much of that 1. 93 lbs was shell versus meat.

0. 9 under a 50% yield on meat to shell ratio, which is what I would expect trying this meat out. Initial experience popping into my mouth.

Moist, flavorful. Then I just kept chewing and chewing and chewing. Unfortunately, the crusher claw meat on a $250 lobster is chewier than I would like.

Let's try the legs. We're going to break the bottom joint off. Might be the most tender part of the whole lobster.

That is actually delicious. I'm sure you guys are wondering, a lobster this big has to have meat loaded in the head. I'm super curious myself.

Let's find out. All right, we're going to pull this out. The base of those legs right here.

There's definitely meat, but it's, you know, not much. Peel it off the shell. Got the lobster lungs right here.

The gills. Pretty gnarly how massive these gills are. Look, found a little chunk of meat in the head there.

There's a lot of tiny little bits of meat in the base of these legs and inside of these legs. And this is going to make a great stock. All right, let's get the meat out of these knuckles.

Oh yeah, look at that. Nice solid chunk right there. Knuckle meat on smaller lobsters is really soft.

On a colossal lobster, it's um texture is actually probably a little better. It's got a good bite to it. Good flavor.

Would I buy a $250 lobster to have better knuckles and a tougher tail and tougher claws? Absolutely not. All right, we're going to make a really simple lobster salad for the crew.

We're going to get this all nice and chopped up. But this tail, we're going to dice it up quite a bit. My crew gets paid by the hour.

I don't need them chewing on this for an hour. All right, we're going to be going in with just a little bit of celery. That should be plenty.

And squeeze all that juice in there, a little bit of pepper, a little bit of coarse sea salt, and not too much mayo. You can start light and add more as you go. You can always add more mayo, but you can't take mayo out once it's in there.

And it looks like that one spoonful is absolutely perfect. This is what we want it to look like right here. And just a good old potato roll.

All right, I think that'll be a good enough work lunch for the boys. In conclusion, it's definitely not a myth that the bigger lobsters are tougher than the smaller lobster. Absolute fact.

But I will say it's kind of an obvious fact. If you have a tail this big and you're boiling it, obviously the outside's going to be cooked way before the inside is. So, the smaller the tail, the more evenly it's going to be cooked when it's boiled.

I think if you butterfly the lobster and cook the tail in two halves, it cook evenly. And potentially, it might not be nearly as tough if you do that. But when it comes to apples to apples boiled main lobster, I'm going to take the small one any day of the week.

Guys, don't worry. Bigger is not always better.