2 Chefs Try to Make Lobster Thermidor with No Recipe

Let's see what the tail looks like, okay.

[knife chops]

Oh, wait a minute, I think I may have made a huge mistake.

[mellow jazz music]

[Jon & Frank] Lobster Thermidor.

Lobster Thermidor, that's what I'm doing today.

Chunks of sweet lobster folded with mushrooms

into a creamy sauce.

The lobster is then stuffed back into its shell,

topped with cheese.

And baked until golden. And bubbly.

I have actually never had this dish before.

I do have Snoop Dogg's cookbook, From Crook to Cook,

and in that book he has a recipe for a Lobster Thermidor.

I don't have a recipe, I don't need a recipe.

I have 20-some odd years of experience.

This is easy, no problem,

Snoop, I'm gonna make you proud.

I'm ready to cook.

So the rules are that I gotta use all the ingredients.

Can you get me like 10 more things to put in or what,

I'm that confident.

Here we go, starting from the first step.

I'm going to need a big pot of water,

that's the main thing.

Put it right here, sir, right on the fire.

We're gonna flavor our water a little,

because I want my lobster to kind of

soak up a little of that flavor.

We're gonna make kind of like a court bouillon,

basically just a flavored water, put some garlic in there.

I'm not even gonna cut the parsley, dump it in.

I'm gonna take a shallot.

What else, take some of the tarragon too.

Fair amount of salt,

it's not gonna make a lot of flavor in here,

but it's going to start that flavor base for us.

So what I'm doing right now is I'm setting myself up

to make a veloute.

A veloute is a close cousin of a bechamel,

but it's thickened stock rather than thickened milk.

All right, I'm gonna start with this lobster and

this knife. [knife bangs]

All right, I'm sorry, oh boy, okay.

A lobster's going in.

Whenever I get a lobster, and I wanna par cook it,

I'm gonna dunk it in head first.

Parcooking means you're cooking halfway,

or a quarter of the way,

just to get the meat out of the shell.

If you overcook the lobster at this point,

it's gonna be tough and rubbery.

And we're gonna let it go down all the way.

I'm gonna use my internal clock cooker

for about five-minutes.

[drum roll]

A lot of times people will kill the lobster

by putting a knife in its head.

They might cut themselves, I think it's a little dangerous.

That's why I parboil it.

I find this to be a little more humane,

the lobster's dying either way.

At the end of the day, we're killing animals to eat them.

If you don't want to, don't eat animals.

Forgive me. [knife clatters]

Okay, moving on.

And now I need some boiling water,

and I'm gonna throw our friend in there.

Till next time, get in there.

All right, I'm still a little jittery actually [chuckles].

I definitely feel it in my legs,

you can't see those, but just know,

they're going crazy down there.

I'm gonna go make my sauce/bechamel/roux.

Don't what it's called.

A roux is a French version of a bechamel.

A roux is butter and flour you mix together

to thicken stuff.

And a bechamel is a

cheesy cream sauce.

So I gotta use all of these ingredients.

[Crew] And to be clear, you don't have to use all,

you just have to use each ingredient.

Oh, I don't have to use all [chuckles].

[Crew] You don't have to use four-heads of garlic.

Oh boy, okay.

So right now my butter is sizzling away,

and what I want to do is flavor my veloute.

I just wanna get some shallots in with my butter.

The shallots and the garlic are integral,

or probably will be integral.

Can I have a sharpening steel please?

[blade scraping]

Wow, way sharper than my knives at home.

I'm gonna do it my way, I'm gonna make 'em real small.

I don't mind some of this stuff being large and chunky.

I am kind of a cook that likes grandma-style food.

The thing with garlic is,

the more you chop it, the stronger it gets.

I personally like rounded flavors.

Let me check out my lobster.

What, it's been like three-minutes probably.

He looks orange, I don't know any other sign

that would indicate a lobster being done,

other than it's pink.

And a lot of people would be like,

How do you know it's done?

I actually know it's not done at this point

and I'm okay with that.

I don't want it to be done at this point.

I want it just to be set

so it's easy to take out of the shell.

If you don't use an ice bath,

the lobster tends to continue to cook.

Now can someone take this pot away from me, it's in my way.

So for right now, what I'm gonna do is

get my mushrooms ready as well.

These are called cremini mushrooms,

I might give these a rinse.

Now, a lot of people say you don't rinse mushrooms.

Usually my general rule is the fancier the mushrooms,

the less you put water on them.

These are not fancy mushrooms,

these are supermarket mushrooms basically.

I think they're gonna probably make the sauce

a little more umami-ish,

that's a buzzword I picked up.

I would assume that

the role they play in this dish personally,

they do have the similar texture to lobster.

It probably stretches the lobster a little.

Okay, it's been eight-minutes,

still pretty orange, I think we'll let him go longer.

I mean, if I over-boil the lobster,

is there such a thing?

Can you over-boil lobster?

Will he get more tender, more juicy, more delicious?

If you overcook the lobster at this point,

it's gonna be tough and rubbery.

You want it to be nice and tender.

I'll probably need a heck of a lot of garlic.

Unfortunately, peeling and cutting garlic

takes a while for me.

At this point my shallots and garlic

are cooked really nice.

If you don't have the measurements to make a roux,

just think of wet sand.

I'm gonna put some teaspoons in there,

and I'm just gonna look at it.

I don't need a recipe for this because I know the technique.

The technique is I want it to look like wet sand,

so right there.

It's gonna be real garlicy.

Oh, a lot of smoke is coming out of there,

smelling, but it looks the same.

Slippery, oh. [tongs clank]

Oh God [chuckles].

Something's coming outta there, look at her,

five more minutes, I'll give him five more minutes.

We're gonna smash this garlic.

Let me just try to smash a bunch of these at once,

see if that works.

No!

I'm gonna open my fish broth,

[pan sizzles]

and I'm gonna whisk that in.

And what I'm trying to do here

is get a consistency that is not ploppy.

It's a technical term that a lot of people don't know.

Basically it means it's too thick,

and we don't want it to be too thick.

Oh, our lobster. [hands clap]

I've been so focused on the garlic

that I haven't checked our lobster recently.

Let's see how he looks.

I think there comes a point

where he's just not gonna stop looking like this,

and I gotta take him out.

Is that point now?

I don't think so. [pan clatters]

I'm not gonna do anything until I finish chopping,

and I'm gonna let it sit for a bit before cutting it up,

'cause I feel like it's something you should do.

If you don't use an ice bath,

the lobster tends to continue to cook,

it's called carry-over cooking.

We don't want it to cook anymore.

We'll cook it later.

It's been about 15-minutes.

It doesn't take more than 10-minutes

to cook a whole lobster.

Yeah, okay, there he is.

Move him and all right.

The thing here is that I gotta know

if he's cooked inside while I still have the water boiling.

Maybe I'll just give him a little cut just to check

to see if he's cooked all the way through.

All right, let's give him a cut.

Okay. [shell cracks]

How do you tell if a lobster's cooked?

Let's see what the tail looks like.

I've had lobster tail multiple times.

[shell cracks]

Okay, all right.

Okay, well the tail's off,

I think I may have made a huge mistake.

When I saw the picture, it's half the lobster

and I think I just removed half of the half of the lobster.

So I think it's gonna maybe look a little different.

There we go, meat looks good, I think it's cooked.

I'm gonna have to do a lot of repositioning.

It's gonna get really messy over here.

But what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna

finish chopping my stuff.

Chop the mushrooms, love a mushroom.

I tried growing them one time, didn't really work out.

You're just supposed to stick 'em in a damp space

like your bathroom, didn't happen for me, I don't know why.

Do you need like seeds?

I don't think so.

I think you're just supposed to like get a box of dirt.

[Crew] Jon, you have 40-minutes.

I have 40-minutes [laughs].

So I'm gonna make a little bouquet garni,

take some lemon, parsley, and some of the tarragon

and it's going in.

It's like a tea bag, it gives us flavor.

Now I like black pepper. [grinder crunches]

I don't care if it leaves the dots in my sauce.

Okay, catch my breath for a sec.

I personally think that all of those ingredients

come together to make like a roux or a bechamel.

I've heard these terms.

The base of a roux to my knowledge is flour,

milk, egg, butter.

Eggs in a roux, you don't want that.

Generally if you add eggs, it's gonna curdle.

Jon, I don't wanna eat lumpy curled eggs, please,

please, please.

By the way, we should probably turn the broiler on.

Did I turn the broiler on, that was a mistake,

I should have done that earlier.

Start.

I'm really bad at baking, not a big flour guy,

but if I had to pick a favorite,

it'd be hydrangea, you know what I mean?

No, I'm sorry, let's go with half a cup, mix that together.

Oh, that's a lot.

Maybe I'll need another egg to even this out,

because this is just way too much flour I think.

I knew I should have done three.

[Crew] Classic roux.

Classic roux, all right, there we go.

It's liquefying a little more, it's a little clumpy,

but it'll have to do for our purposes today.

Let's put some heavy cream in this.

Cream will make it creamier, that looks good.

Yeah, all right, that's more of the consistency

I was looking for, like a pancake batter almost.

All right, I'm adding in my shallots,

my garlic and my mushrooms. [pan sizzles]

Wanna cook 'em down a little bit,

make the sauce real fragrant, gonna put in some salt.

Let it get all happy.

These are the ingredients that I have yet to use,

cayenne pepper, haven't used that yet, Dijon mustard,

a lemon, cognac and fish stock.

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot my herbs.

Got parsley,

thyme? [Jon sniffs]

Might be thyme.

I'm gonna add my fish stock, want a nice sauce.

And I'm gonna do my mushrooms with some of the shallots.

I'm not gonna put garlic in,

and I kind of want the mushrooms

to be the same size as my lobster, quarter or sixths.

I wanna start my mushrooms out in oil,

and then put butter in it.

I'm gonna go outta left field here,

and think that I should broil.

I think I'm gonna broil it.

Broil is the really hot one.

Great, I think it's gone.

My sauce is looking wonderful.

Tastes like fish, that's a good thing, it's not a bad thing.

And I'm back to the sauce, it's looking mighty fine.

How about we add some more salt?

I'm gonna put in cayenne pepper, I love cayenne, oh yeah.

My lemon, mustard, and add like a little bit Cognac.

Let me taste what I got going on here.

Wow, the sauce is actually pretty good.

I think once I add in that, I'm gonna call it a bechamel.

No, what did I call it, a roux.

I'm gonna call it a roux.

[Crew] Roux-chemal?

A roux-chemal.

Pan's looking hot, I can smell the oil.

I'm dropping my mushrooms in. [pan sizzles]

I always season my mushrooms.

Mushrooms should be cooked on high, they're mostly water.

Last few things before we get to our lobster, cheese,

I feel I should grate some into the sauce,

you know, get it a little thicker.

I'm gonna fish out that Parmesan.

[Crew] We're looking at 20-minutes, Jon.

20-minutes, okay.

Okay, we got 20-minutes left.

Panic mode has set in.

I also gotta use my herbs, thyme.

No, this is parsley.

I was gonna say that time is against me right now.

And then our other herb.

Oh, you know what? [Jon sniffs]

No, I thought I had it.

You know what, might be sage, might be sage.

This is tarragon, it's not sage,

totally different flavors.

Tarragon, light and fresh,

sage is like rich, deep and heady.

I think it's sage.

We're gonna dump in our roux/bechamel.

I'm gonna take it down real low,

'cause I don't want any of it curdling.

This sauce looking a bit clumpy,

definitely needs more liquid in it.

It's probably clumping up because of the milk agents.

It's looking much better

the more fish stock I've been adding.

Let's give it another taste.

Kind of tastes like clam chowder.

I know it's not right, but I'm pretty happy with it.

All right, it's time to break down that lobster.

I think it looks really good.

A lot of people will do this before they

cook the lobster, cut down.

So I'm gonna present this dish on the half shell.

So I'm gonna have to split him up, de-shell him,

here we go.

It's looking pretty gross in here, pretty disgusting.

One of the coolest things you see right here

is this stuff, this is roe, this green stuff.

You supposed to eat that part?

The guts, I don't really eat this part.

Don't throw it away that we're gonna add to our sauce.

[shell cracks]

I'm not gonna get points for presentation today.

How does Snoop do this?

So we take the claws out.

Then what I do is get the back of my knife.

Tap, tap, tap. [knife bangs]

And this pops out, look, right.

The problem here is this lobster

is falling apart very quickly.

Was that the consequence of letting it boil for too long?

Kitchen shears I think are the best way

to get the knuckles out.

They've got lots of spikes on 'em,

you could really get hurt.

[Jon yells]

I'm gonna take out the tail, pops out nice and easy.

My original plan was to have the lobster cut in half

and the meat stuffed back into the lobster.

I think I may have to instead take the meat

and stuff it into areas of the lobster.

It'll maybe look a little more like an hors d'oeuvres plate

than a Lobster Thermador, but maybe it'll taste good.

Perfect. [shell cracks]

There's a claw, we have made contact with lobster claw.

Yeah, there we go, we're gonna stuff it into shells,

very jagged shells.

I'm gonna stuff manually, I'm just gonna go wherever I can.

I'm gonna split the tail, I think.

Fantastic, I love symmetry.

My confidence rate was an eight to start,

has decreased to a four,

and now I'm proud to say I brought it up to a five.

Usually when I come to Epicurious,

I got everything ready to go.

I've never been thrown into the mix,

and I'm freaking out, man, I'm freaking out.

Cognac time, watch your faces.

Do it off the flame so it doesn't go into the camera.

[Cognac sizzles]

It might go up in fire, but it might not, and that's okay.

Got my cheeses.

I'm gonna take that piece of rind and throw it in there,

more flavor.

And what I'm gonna do with these is I'm gonna shred them.

Parmesan cheese, I'm gonna do on the small side.

We don't need a lot, because we only basically

have one lobster.

And then Gruyere on the larger setting.

When you grate on the side like this,

you're basically doing less work.

Deep breath, right.

We're done with the sachet.

I need egg yolks, so this is what I call a liaison.

Heavy cream and egg yolks,

that's gonna thicken my sauce a little.

Here's where the magic happens, right?

I have my sauce, it's hot.

I have my green lobster roe, wait till you see this,

this is awesome.

Right into the pot, watch. [spoon clatters]

Look at the color, you see that color change?

Can you guys see that? [blender buzzes]

That roe basically goes from green to pink,

and that is so much beautiful lobster flavor.

So that roe is gonna flavor my finished sauce.

Now I have another pot and a strainer,

this will get on a lumps or chunks.

I'm going to add a little spot of my raw cognac.

I like a little bit of raw alcohol flavor.

Cayenne pepper, mustard's gonna add some sharpness.

The fresh lemon juice is gonna cut

a lot of that super sharp flavors.

It tastes good, I do have to adjust.

I'm gonna add a little more pepper, a little more salt.

I think what I can do now is I'm adding my mushrooms.

[Crew] You are actually supposed to have

about three-minutes left.

Okay, three-minutes, great.

So I'm gonna stick some sauce on here.

It's looking pretty small, but there is four of them.

And let's add some cheese on top.

Last thing, parsley on top, give it that fancy look.

Thermador, I don't know what kind of word that is,

could be close to temperature, meaning really hot.

That's a really hot lobster.

I have a sheet tray,

I'm gonna tuck this little antenna under.

I don't want it to get burnt in the broiler.

I'm saving the claws because they're a nice garnish,

I'm just warming them up.

I'm gonna take my lobster now,

it's going right into the sauce.

I want it to be coated really well.

So mushrooms, lobster, everything goes back.

I don't care if this kind of overflows a little.

This is not something that's super precious, fill it up.

So I'm gonna put my cheese,

and we're gonna go right into the boiler.

It's real hot in there,

so I'm gonna have to keep an eye on this

to make sure it doesn't burn.

Clean your station, make it look presentable.

I'm going to the garbage, and not on the floor, I promise.

Oh no, what a surgical mess over here.

Try and keep the oven door closed at this point.

A lot of people get nervous,

and start opening the door and closing the door.

I might've made a huge mistake.

I think parsley, maybe you're supposed

to garnish it afterwards.

Maybe I should take it out and take the parsley off

and then put it back in,

and then use that parsley to garnish it.

Sometimes you just gotta let the lobster breathe

in between oven sessions.

Now it's gonna go back in the oven,

and I'll stick it there until it browns, Thermador.

Okay, I think I'm gonna take it out.

I'm not too stressed about it being too brown.

Honestly, I've made a ton of mistakes today,

but broiling I think was the right decision.

Herbs into the sauce,

let's make this kind of bright and fresh.

Putting the sauce under,

because we don't wanna cover this masterpiece up.

Here we go, there's one tail.

Oh, you know, this might be really cool.

So you got one tail that's looking like that,

and the other tail that's looking like this.

Look at that, it's a Pisces sign, it's a yin and a yang,

a Jon and a Frank.

We wanna try and keep the plate as clean as possible.

Try to find the nicest side of the claw.

We should do the big boy on top,

we want the customer to see that

and be like, Ooh, I got lots of lobster.

You definitely wanna use precooked parsley for this.

[Frank] I just wanna have

a little bit of bright lemon flavor.

Some Parmesan, and I think we have

Thermador.

And that is Lobster Thermador Frank's way.

Okay. [both laugh]

How did it go, Jon?

You know, by the looks of it, not too great, Frank.

[Frank] It doesn't look that bad.

You know what this makes me think of?

[Jon] What?

It's more of like a tapas.

I called it a hors d'oeuvres early.

This is a meal and that is the snack.

[Jon] The appetizer.

What'd you think were your hardest points?

So the thing that I wanted to ask you about

was making the sauce.

Yeah.

I kind of mixed everything together,

just threw it in a pan.

All right.

That's something that I always caution against,

because things have different cooking temperatures.

So I'm always looking to build layers of flavor.

I add the eggs at the end.

At the end.

So I've taught a lot of people how to cook,

and how many times I got scrambled eggs, it was a lot.

Did you scramble your eggs, Jon?

I did scramble my eggs. [both laugh]

So we're having a little bit of lobster with eggs.

With that said,

I would love to eat this Lobster Thermador.

Let's try it.

[Jon] I actually like how the tails came out,

they look like little fishes.

But the sauce does look a little...

It's clumpy, definitely clumpy.

I gotta tell you, flavor's good, it tastes like lobster.

Your sauce, it's not bad, I like it a lot.

Great.

One thing I would've done,

I wouldn't have added the parsley until later.

If you wanted to do as a garnish,

I folded mine into the sauce.

In order to cook this, I broiled it.

I realized that I put it in with parsley first,

that's why some of the parsley's a little crispy.

[Frank] I like the little singe on the tail.

[Jon] You're being so nice to me.

Listen, I want you to learn from this.

Yeah.

The lobster is a little overcooked.

You probably could have pulled back on it, right?

Okay.

What I do with my lobster was I just parcooked it.

I did not give it the stab, I just put my whole lobster in.

You didn't...

I didn't have to skewer it, no.

You ready to taste mine?

[Jon] Let's taste yours.

All right, just take the whole thing, let's go.

My God.

I'm gonna hold and you slide it on.

[Jon] Woo, all right.

[Frank] I put a little bit of the sauce on the bottom,

and I'm giving you the big boy claw.

[Jon] A claw.

It's a little overcooked.

What do you taste when you first put in your mouth, Jon?

Buttery cheesy.

Buttery cheesy, yeah.

So that means we have to dig in a little.

Yours is a lot less rubbery.

Because I knew that I was gonna cook it

basically twice, right?

[Crew] We got a gift for you.

Yes, booze! Oh Cognac!

We're gonna be fancy, let's get in the glass,

and let's warm it up.

[Jon sighs]

We'll do one of these, Jon, come on.

Yeah. That is really good.

I think it's an amazing ingredient too.

Did you learn anything today?

I learned how to make Lobster Thermador,

I've never made it before in over 28-years.

That's surprising to me.

Yeah, and you know what?

End of the day I hopefully made a new friend [laughs].

I'll say you did, Frank.

Thank you.

[Frank] You're welcome.