Baked Lobster Tail Recipe

Baked lobster tail is a butterflied tail — shell split down the top, meat lifted out to rest on it — brushed with garlic butter and baked at 425°F for about 1 1/2 minutes per ounce. Two 6-ounce tails take 10 minutes. The meat is done at 140°F, opaque and just firm; past 145°F it turns rubbery, and there is no way back.

How to make baked lobster tail

Baking beats boiling and broiling for a tail. Boiled meat is waterlogged and takes no butter; a broiler chars the top of the meat before the base is cooked. At 425°F the tail cooks through evenly in about ten minutes, the exposed meat browns lightly, and the butter goes onto the meat instead of into a pot of water.

A few notes on what to buy:

• Cold-water tails — from Maine, Canada, Australia or South Africa — have firm, sweet meat. Warm-water tails, recognisable by the spotted, yellowish shell, are cheaper and often soft or mealy after cooking. The label or the fishmonger will say which.
• Six ounces is the size to look for. A four-ounce tail is mostly shell; anything over ten ounces cooks unevenly and is better split lengthwise.
• Frozen is fine — nearly all tails are sold frozen — but thaw them overnight in the fridge. Thawing in warm water starts cooking the outside while the centre is still ice.
• Unsalted butter, because the lobster brings its own salt.

Butterflying the tail

Butterflying is what makes a baked tail look like a restaurant's, and it changes how it cooks. Meat left inside the shell steams pale and takes none of the butter; meat lifted out onto the shell browns, bastes, and is exposed to the thermometer.

Cut with kitchen shears down the centre of the hard top shell, from the open end to just before the tail fan, cutting through the shell only — not the meat under it, and not the thin bottom shell. Spread the two halves of the shell apart, slide a thumb between the meat and the shell on each side to loosen it, and lift the meat up through the opening, leaving it attached at the fan end. Press the shell halves back together underneath so the meat sits on top like a saddle. If there is a dark line running along the back of the meat, that is the vein; pull it out. LobsterAnywhere's butterflying guide describes the uncut bottom shell as the hinge that holds everything together, and gives the same 140°F as the temperature to cook to.

Ingredients

• 2 lobster tails (6 ounces each)
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
• 1 lemon, cut into wedges

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 425°F and line a sheet pan with foil. Pat the tails dry.
2. Butterfly each tail: with kitchen shears, cut down the centre of the top shell from the open end to the tail fan, without cutting the bottom shell. Spread the shell, run a thumb under the meat to loosen it, lift it out through the cut and lay it on top of the closed shell, keeping it attached at the fan. Pull out the dark vein if there is one.
3. Stir the melted butter, garlic, lemon juice, paprika, salt and pepper together. Brush half of it over the exposed meat.
4. Bake for 9 to 12 minutes, until the meat is opaque and an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part reads 140°F. Six-ounce tails take about 10 minutes; smaller tails less, larger ones more — about 1 1/2 minutes per ounce.
5. Brush with the remaining butter, scatter over the parsley and serve at once with the lemon wedges.

Baking time by weight

Recipes quote anywhere from one to two minutes per ounce, and the spread is real: a thick, tightly curled tail cooks more slowly than a flat butterflied one of the same weight. These ranges are for butterflied tails at 425°F, and the thermometer overrides all of them.

| Tail weight | Time at 425°F | |---|---| | 4 ounces | 7 to 9 minutes | | 6 ounces | 9 to 12 minutes | | 8 ounces | 12 to 14 minutes | | 10 ounces | 15 to 18 minutes |

The meat is done at 140°F, when it has turned from translucent grey to white and springs back when pressed. Lobster keeps cooking for a minute or two after it leaves the oven, so 140°F on the sheet pan is 145°F on the plate. Beyond that the proteins tighten and squeeze out the moisture; that is where rubbery lobster comes from.

What to serve with

Lobster tails are a small main, so the sides carry the plate. Wingstop's fried corn works because the seasoning stands up to the butter; so does a bowl of O'Charley's potato soup as a first course. For a surf-and-turf, Pit Boss brisket or a strip steak on the same plate. And if plain garlic butter is too plain, Cajun honey butter sauce brushed on in the last minute is the other direction entirely.