Since lobsters were so cheap, we purchased a whole bunch of lobsters to cook up and serve during a family dinner. I've had lobster cooked in all different kinds of ways, but I had read about French Laundry's technique of poaching the lobster tails in butter and wanted to try this method.
To start, I boiled up some water along with some white vinegar and poured this over the raw lobsters, letting them steep for a few minutes. Next, I disassembled the lobsters, pulling apart the body, claws and tails. While the lobster tail was still hot, I twisted off the flat end and then pushed the tail meat through the shells to remove.
I then placed the partially cooked lobster meat (practically still raw) and some unsalted butter in a zip loc bag, removing as much air as possible using the water displacement method. Similar to Thomas Keller's method, Modernist Cuisine has a recipe for poached lobster tails, and in that recipe, the book recommends using a water temperature of 125 degrees F, cooking to a core temp of 123 degrees. I decided to follow this, and I let the lobster tails sit in my water bath for about 15 minutes before removing - I have an old school Sous Vide Supreme, but there are many better, cheaper sous vide options available now such as Joule and Anova.
Modernist Cuisine recommends doing a quick 10 second sear on the tails to firm up the surface of the lobster but I skipped this step. The results are shown below. The lobter tail meat was certainly very buttery, tender and smooth but I somehow still felt like the meat was a bit undercooked. I was fine with the texture but it was more the faint taste of raw lobster that I wasn't overly thrilled about. I doubt the 10 second sear that I skipped would have made a significant difference in the end result, but I could be wrong. If I were to do this again, I'd try the final sear step or possibly just cook the tail meat at a higher temperature.
