Bubba the 22 lb. Lobster

LTH:

Saw this story on CNN's web site today & thought it was pretty good.....

In a nutshell, a 22 lb lobster showed up in a seafood market in Pittsburgh, which set off a contest between People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals, who wanted the beast released into the ocean, and People For Eating Tasty Animals, who put in a hefty bid to buy it and eat it.

Bet I know where most of the sympathies here lie....

ChiNOLA wrote:In a nutshell, a 22 lb lobster showed up in a seafood market in Pittsburgh,

ChiNOLA,

And I thought Homaro Homard was big.

The 22 pound Lobster who ate Pittsburgh must be Homaro's grandfather.

Enjoy,
Gary

Channel 7's morning news has been following the saga of Bubba. My question is wouldn't a lobster that big be tough and probably not very flavorful?

Kwe730 wrote:Channel 7's morning news has been following the saga of Bubba. My question is wouldn't a lobster that big be tough and probably not very flavorful?

Kwe,

The CNN report ChiNOLA posted said the 22-lb lobster was donated to the Pittsburgh Zoo, who is sending him to an aquarium at a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum.

Far as tough goes, never had a 22-lb, but the larger lobsters I've eaten have not been tough. I'd be very happy to volunteer to eat the 22-lb lobster and report back.

Enjoy,
Gary

One of my brother's once won an almost 16 pound lobster in a "guess the weight" contest. Simply steamed, he said (and those he shared it with agreed) that it was every bit as tasty and tender as a 2 pound hardshell.

The added benefit, us being a family that loves to pick the bones, or in a lobster's case, the bits of meat out of the body of even a 1 pound lobster, you got more for your work out of the body of that one.

Gary,

From what Channel 7 was reporting earlier in the week, there was some discussion about possibly cooking him up, but I knew that he was now headed for Ripley's.

If you ever get to dine on a 22lb. lobster, make sure you report back!

My only worry about a bug of that size is not toughness (c'mon King Crabs are much bigger) but toxicity. Lobsters are bottom feeders for the most part, and absorb an awful lot of nasties.

On that subject, go read "Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller" by Neal Stephenson (author of Snow Crash). It's a very silly, light read, full of Stephenson's usual hilarious digressions, while giving a nice tight story of activists vs polluting industry and guerilla acts of eco-sabotage. Some really nasty lobsters are pulled out of Boston Harbor in that book.

Hi,

When Gary had his Valentine's 5-pounder. I was looking around to see if there was anything on aging lobsters with nothing very conclusive.

I did learn something about the mating game, which I found interesting. Lobsters mate with lobsters of their size, so the mating pool for a 1-2 pound lobster is much larger than for this 22 pound lobster.

More interesting, was the volume of eggs and fertility: the larger the female the more eggs she produced. The downside of harvesting these very large lobsters is the loss of reproductivity on a substantial scale. Of course, there probably is not enough information to know whether there are fertility cut-offs, which exist for mammals.

Cathy2 wrote:More interesting, was the volume of eggs and fertility: the larger the female the more eggs she produced. The downside of harvesting these very large lobsters is the loss of reproductivity on a substantial scale.

The same is true for Halibut. When I was in Alaska a couple of summers ago, the big news was that somebody had caught a nearly 500 lb. Halibut (it was 8 1/2 feet long). There was quite a bit of grousing about them keeping the fish, since it was clearly a large breeding female that many thought should have been let go.... The meat on the really big Halibut is not supposed to be very good, and I certainly can't imagine anyone wanting to have one of those nasty looking things hanging on their wall as a trophy....

Somewhat beside the point here is the fact that Wholey's, the P'Burgh seafood emporium that is benefitting from the story, is a great seafood store (and one with clout on the docks in New England, it seems).

on the subject of lobster toxicity... i believe most of the toxins from the water that the lobster ingests end up being stored in the tomalley, and not in the the claw and tail meat that most people eat. the tomalley is the black slimey stuff (green if you cook it too long, imho) that comes out of the body when you break off the tail.

some people eat the tomalley and swear it's wonderful, but i'm pretty sure that's where you'll find the toxins if you're looking for them.

I'm sorry to report that Bubba has died in captivity.

Bubba, the 23-pound-lobster that got front-page treatment today after a seafood store spared its life, died at about 3 p.m. today at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium.

The cause of death is not yet known, but the lobster did not eat since his transfer yesterday from Wholey's in the Strip District to the aquarium in Highland Park, the zoo announced.

Sorry that Bubba didn't make the transition from Wholey's to the Zoo. As someone already noted, Wholey's (pronounced "woolies" as in underwear) is on incredible fish market. Lots and lots and lots of fresh fish (including a local favorite--a type of croaker I think--called 'Virginia spot'), with several live tanks at the rear.

Wholey's is well known to foodies bcz of their fish sandwich. Three or four different kinds, a simple, extremely well-executed batter, put on a good local bun.

Also a sushi guy at work just as you enter the door.

I've been lucky enough to spend quite a few extended periods living and cooking in Da 'Burgh, and there's nothing like a trip to Wholey's to make one's day. Wish there were someplace like it in the Midwest...

Geo

I've sampled large lobster ar a corporate party in Japan and it was excellent, no different than a small lobster. Presumably fresh flown in from Maine. Don't know how many pounds they were, but each of the dozen at the various food stations had a tail as big as your forearm with the biggest lobster at the center display table was almost 2ft long overall.

Lobster tail sashimi is very popular and there are restaurants that specialize in it. They considered the geen crud to be one of the best parts.