Essential Equipment for Cooking Lobster

Whether you're boiling or steaming lobster, you are going to need a large stockpot with a lid that fits. Choose a heavy 12-quart stockpot with easy-to-grip handles.

In the test kitchen and our home kitchens alike, we use tongs to lift, flip, turn, rotate, and otherwise move every conceivable type of food while it cooks, and tongs are the easiest way to get live lobsters into a pot, and hot, cooked lobsters out of the pot. Our winning tongs come with and without silicone tips—we have found that it is easier to grip lobster without the nylon tips.

We’ve found that the best way to ensure lobster is cooked correctly is to check the temperature of the meat in the tail. Our favorite instant-read thermometer is worth the investment (we use ours daily in the test kitchen) but a good-quality inexpensive version will get the job done too.

Skewers can be useful for pushing the meat out of the lobster knuckles, which is difficult to wiggle out otherwise. If you don't have skewers, the handle of a spoon works well too.

A rolling pin might seem like an unusual tool for lobster, but in the test kitchen, we use one to get the meat out of the legs of the lobster. To extract that meat, lay the legs flat on the counter. Starting with the claw end, use a rolling pin to push out the meat, but stop shy of the knuckle or else you might crush the meat and wind up with pieces of shells in your lobster.

Seafood scissors come in handy for a lot of reasons, from peeling shrimp to cracking open tough lobster shells. We find them especially useful for cutting through the shell of the lobster claws, which ensures you are less likely to mangle the meat inside. If you eat a lot of shrimp, crab, or lobster, at about $8 a pair our winning seafood scissors are a worthy addition to your kitchen arsenal. If you don't have seafood scissors, regular kitchen scissors or a lobster cracking tool work as a substitute.