The idea to brine lobster is not something new, and when I decided to try it, it was on the basis that the lobsters here on the island are tough. I am not sure that’s the only issue given the water temperatures are much warmer here when compared to the Mediterranean.

To brine seafood, it’s a little different from meats, or poultry. So what do you need to do it: a bowl, ice, salt, sugar and a syringe to inject it. Yes a medical syringe is needed, a 0.4mm needle to penetrate the underside skin which is a soft elastic skin. The reason behind this exercise is to try to increase the moisture and penetrate the fibers inflating the lobster’s moisture.

The brine is as follows: 5% salt and 3.5% sugar and 4 hours brining and 1 hour resting. By the way it isn’t necessary to inject the lobster, you can soak it in a wet brine as well. In this case, you can use some fresh herbs and or ginger to infuse the flavors. Normally I would make a sachet for the herbs to contain them or they get all over the meat. For this I use some cheese cloth. A good way to extract plant flavors is to use the chamber vacuum and smash the vacuoles of the plants to extract flavors.

Within the rigid walls of most plant cells lies a watery vacuole that takes up most of the cell’s volume. The vacuole is a structure that provides rigidity and contains nutrients and other materials.
When plants are cooked above 60°C the vacuoles begin to rupture. As the cells empty, their internal pressure falls, and they deflate and pull away from each other. This creates gaps between the cells that weaken the tissues. Vacuoles often collapse during cooking or under pressure, and when they do, the food often softens and releases more flavour.By the way, I sometimes use a microwave to extract flavors or dry a herb.

The flesh of crustaceans contains lots of sugars and amino acids to counteract the salinity of seawater, therefore the Maillard reactions can take place at unusually low temperatures.