How to cook a Lobster

Cooking a whole lobster can be a daunting task at first but is pretty simple and humane if you follow a few fail-safe steps.

First of all, a lobster doesn't contain as much meat as you think it might compared to its weight. You need to be looking at something weighing over a pound in weight per person, double this size if you are going to serve half per portion.

1. Make sure your lobster is alive. Weigh it then place in the freezer for a couple of hours and it will peacefully fall into a comatose state.

2. In the meantime, bring a large saucepan of water to the boil with a sliced carrot, a stick of celery, a chopped onion, some parsley stalks, a few peppercorns, bay leaves, a sprig of thyme and a small handful of sea salt.

3. Take your lobster/s from the freezer, plunge into the boiling water, cover and reduce the heat.

4. A Lobster weighing 1 pound needs to cook gently for 10 minutes. For larger lobsters add an extra 3 minutes per pound.

If you aren't planning on eating the lobsters right away, drain and plunge them into ice cold water. Use as per recipe.