Our Ultimate Mac and Cheese is incredible, but this Lobster Mac and Cheese will have you saying Lobstah! all day long. Cooking the lobster in wine, garlic and butter adds an incredible flavor profile to this dish.
Prep, Cook, Servings
Prep: 25 min
Cook: 30-35 min
Servings: 8-10
Ingredients
1 bottle white wine
14 Tbsp unsalted butter
8 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 lbs of lobster tails or a combination of tails and claws.
Salt and Pepper
1 pound cavatappi or elbow macaroni. (can also use small shells)
1 quart milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
12 ounces Gruyere cheese, grated
8 ounces extra-sharp cheddar, grated
1/2 tsp nutmeg (optional)
1 1/2 cups breadcrumbs (regular or panko)
1/4-1/2 cup pecorino romano cheese, grated
Instructions
Place a large saucepan or large skillet on medium-high heat (something big enough to cook the lobster)
Add enough wine to fill the bottom 1" of the pan. Add 6 Tbsp of the butter along with the garlic and bring to a near boil. When near boiling add a few shakes of salt into the pan to taste (about 1/2 tsp) and then add the lobster. Don't crowd the lobster, if you need to cook in two batches do so.
Cook for approx. 5 minutes until the shells are brightly colored and the meat is white. Remove the shells from the pan into a bowl but DO NOT THROW AWAY THE JUCE FROM THE PAN! Save the juice for the next step.
When cooled, remove the lobster meat from the shells and chop roughly into bite-sized chunks. Place the meat into a clean bowl, then add a few ladles of the wine/garlic/butter juice from the pan to keep the lobster moist while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Set the bowl aside.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Place a large pot on high heat and cook the cavatappi pasta according to the directions on the package for an al-dente cook. When finished, drain the pasta and set aside.
Heat the milk in a small saucepan, but do not boil it. When the milk is warm turn off the heat and set aside.
In a large pot, one large enough to hold all of the pasta at the end of this step, melt 6 Tbsp of butter over low heat. When melted add the flour and cook for 2 minutes, stirring with a whisk. You should get a nutty aroma as the butter and flour melds.
While still whisking, add the milk, about 1/4 at a time to the pot. After each addition, allow the milk to thicken. Repeat until all of the milk is added and you have a thickened bechamel sauce. You can use a wooden spoon or spatula to test the thickness, simply dip the tool into the sauce and remove. Run your finger down the length of the tool. If the sauce holds then it's ready, if the sauce runs through your line, it's not quite ready.
When the sauce is thickened, turn off and remove from the heat. Then add the cheese to the pot and mix well until all of the cheese is melted. Taste, add more salt and pepper as necessary.
Add the pasta and lobster to the pot along with a few tablespoons of the wine/butter/garlic juice and mix well. Add the macaroni mix to a greased 9x13 baking dish and spread evenly in the dish. (we use olive oil spray)
Melt the remaining 2 Tbsp of butter and combine that with the breadcrumbs and pecorino-romano cheese in a small bowl. Spread the breadcrumb mixture across the top of the baking dish.
Bake 30 - 35 minutes, until the top is a golden brown and the cheese is bubbling on the sides. If the top is not as golden as you'd like it, simply turn on the broiler in your oven to toast the top further. Keep a close eye on the oven as the top will go from golden to burned very quickly.
Allow to rest up to 5 minutes before serving.
Video Transcript. Apologies for any typos.
Walter 0:00
Hey folks, welcome back to Where's Walter. Today we are making lobster mac and cheese.
Walter 0:16
So the first thing the recipe calls for is a pound and a half of cooked lobster meat. I've got about a pound in three quarters of uncooked tails here. So I would recommend tails and or claws as what you're probably going to do. So if you're going to buy whole lobsters probably need about two and a half pounds of whole lobster, maybe three pounds of whole lobster to get one and a half pounds of actual meat. So this is about a pound and three quarters of tails. Yeah, we might get about a pound and a half, but that's okay.
Walter 0:45
The first thing we got to do is cook these. I'm going to cook them the way that I do my clams and mussels on Christmas Eve I'm gonna do a little white wine, a little butter and a little garlic.
Walter 0:57
Turning the heat up pretty darn high. I'm gonna add some white wine, just any old white wine, whatever you got sitting around the house we'll do. I want to make sure the shells really get down there in the liquid. So let's go ahead and add a really good amount, that's really good. That's about probably close to a bottle of wine. Can't have too much wine, right?
Walter 1:19
This is, I don't know, eight cloves of garlic maybe that I just roughly chopped up and then I've got three quarters of a stick of butter. And we're just going to kind of let that all melt down.
Walter 1:29
Don't forget while it's boiling and pour yourself a little glass of wine while you're at it. Salud!
Walter 1:39
Okay, what is this? This is, I need my glasses now. I am 54 years old. All right, this is Dry Creek Vineyard Fumé Blanc. Fumé Blanc, really? What the hell is that? What is Fumé Blanc? It's Sauvignon Blanc, vintage 2019. Fumé Blanc
Walter 2:07
Garlic wine and butter. What else good. Well, you know what, I'll put a little salt in there. This is a great little unit that we got as Sur La Table. You just kind of put the salt in there, you just kind of grind back and forth comes out beautifully, highly recommend this.
Walter 2:26
Mmm white wine, garlic and butter. Now you can cook the lobster any way you want to. I'm choosing to cook it this way. All right, we're boiling again. I wish that you had smellivision because it smells great. Go ahead and drop tails and I'm going to put them in upside down. Don't want to crowd them. If they don't all fit in this first time. That's fine. I'll do a second cook. Let's see. Who else Oh. All right, I got one. I got five in there. And that's good. I'll just do these last two separately, just to make sure they all get a really good cook on them. I'll let them cook up for about five minutes or so we'll see what they look like. Time for the cover on.
Walter 3:04
The timer just went off. It's been about five minutes, you can see the lobster beautiful red. The meat is nice and white, beautifully cooked. That's what you're looking for. Go ahead and take these out. Again, I wish you had smell o vision, the wine, the garlic, the butter smells so good. And when you're done, don't throw away this juice in here. Because after we cut the lobsters out of the shell, we're going to go ahead and immerse them in the juice so that they sit in that while we get the rest of the meal ready. All right, two more little tails to go. Five minutes from now we'll be ready to start cleaning up some lobster tails.
Walter 3:41
So the easy way to open these is you just go ahead There's your finish tail, you just break this part of the tail right off, snapped right off very easily. And then I have.. now where...
Walter 3:55
And then I have a pair of kitchen shears. These are like really strong shears that cut through a lot of things real easily. And I'm just simply going to cut right through the underside of a tail and get that soft underside off of there. And then just simply all you have to do is just split this open, reach your fingers in there and then guide the meat right out of the shell. Now these are very small lobster tails.
Walter 4:22
But there you go, we get a nice little piece of lobster meat just like that. We'll cut it up. I told you we started off with about a pound and three quarters with the shells. And we ended up with one pound two ounces about what we actually ended up with with the meat just to kind of give you a sense of you know that weight change. So typically buying two pounds a lobster doesn't mean you get two pounds a lobster you're gonna get about a pound and a half, maybe about a pound and a quarter. But we got one pound two ounces. Let's chop this up. And then we'll lead along just a little bit of that luscious butter wine and garlic just to keep it nice and moist while it waits to go into the mac and cheese.
Walter 5:04
The lobster meat done, now we're getting everything else ready. So we got a pound a cavatappi that's boiling up behind me right now, I've got my little Paprika Recipe Manager that I've talked about a lot sitting here on this tablet. So we've got 12 ounces of Gruyere, Guri year, Gruyere maybe cheese, 12 ounces of it in here, plus I've got eight ounces of extra sharp cheddar cheese in the bowl, ready to go. We've got a half a cup of all purpose flour ready to go. We've got one full stick of butter that's been cut strategically. You'll see why later.
Walter 5:41
What else we got, we've got a cup and a half of panko breadcrumbs, it calls for regular bread crumbs. We had panko in the house. So we're gonna use panko, why not. And then one quart of milk, one full quart of milk will be used. So the next step that we actually have to do after the pasta is done, we're going to go make a bechémel. And then we're going to combine all the ingredients together and get ready to bake. Are you ready? Let's do it.
Walter 6:07
So the next step is to warm up the milk and we want to heat it up. We don't want to boil it. We just want to heat it up. I'm going to pour the entire quart right into the pan. There goes the entire quart and I'll turn this on. On our stove a three it's like a low, low medium.
Walter 6:27
While you're waiting for it to warm up this is a good time to have another glass of wine. Huh? Cheers.
Walter 6:36
Why don't we let milk boil? Anybody know?
Rebecca 6:39
So it doesn't separate and curdle.
Walter 6:41
Rebecca says it curdles and separates. See there's your lesson boys and girls. Don't let the milk boil because it will curdle and separate. Very good lesson for the hot chocolate as well. Which is also on this channel. I have a Whipped hot chocolate and then a hot chocolate lesson on how to make chocolate. You should check it out. It involves milk and chocolate.
Walter 7:14
Do you have something else to do?
Walter 7:16
It's gonna take a few minutes.
Walter 7:18
Y'all should go do something else. Seriously, like anything else.
Walter 7:23
Just watching milk boil. Nope. Not boil, not boil.
Walter 7:31
And we're just trying to why are we trying to get a hot? Are we just trying to get it warm? What are we trying to do here Rebecca, cuz it's warm now.
Walter 7:38
Just says heat the milk. heat the milk. So heat the milk to me means when I stick my finger in his pan here, just come on over here. Just take a look. So I'm just sticking my finger in and it's warm. It's not cold anymore. So it's nice and warm. So the directions say heat the milk. So I'm going to say the milk is heated. It's warm, it's not cold anymore. And now we're going to switch out we're going to bring in, Isn't this a beautiful All Clad stockpot I want to say so whatnot.
Rebecca 8:10
It's a chefs pan.
Walter 8:12
It's an All Clad chefs pan. In fact, this is what I cooked lobster in earlier. This is what we cook a lot of stuff in. You know if you haven't invested in nice pots and good cookware do go get yourself some good cookware. I mean, this is about four or five years old. Now look at this thing. Beautiful shape.
Walter 8:29
Six tablespoons of butter going in. What's next Rebecca, she's reading the recipe to me because you know, the recipe's over there.
Walter 8:37
Once that melted, we're gonna go ahead and add the cup of flour. Excuse me half a cup of flour, forgetting there. Okay, it's almost melted. We're almost there. It's getting there. Oh, so pretty. Smell o vision. YouTube. One day, we'll have smell o vision, and then it will be awesome. The world will be awesome. Everything is awesome.
Walter 9:01
So once this is melted, we're gonna go ahead and add that half cup of flour. And then we're gonna whisk it in and basically make a roux. All right, we're gonna add the flour and we're gonna whisk it for what two minutes? You said?
Rebecca 9:25
for two minutes, two minutes.
Walter 9:26
All right. I'll tell you what. Why don't you grab that GoPro and bring it on over so the nice folks at home can see what's actually happening in here. Hey, you gotta bring it over, tilted down in there. There you go.
Walter 9:39
So we're gonna cook this over low heat for two minutes. I'm gonna reach over I'm gonna grab a timer. Set the timer for two minutes. Timer set for two minutes and now I should I be whisking this up the whole time?
Walter 9:57
Rebecca is giving me a shoulder shrug. So that means neither one of us knows what we're doing. The fun part of cooking. Sometimes you don't know what you're doing, you know, come on, you just have fun and you make stuff up in the kitchen.
Walter 10:11
So this is a half a cup of flour with six tablespoons of butter. On this particular stove, I've got to set down to a three, four is a good medium on this stove. So they said low heat. So I've got it on three, which is on the high side of low. Oh, how pretty. How's Rebecca's camera work everybody, she doing a good job. So if you take a little whiff, then it kind of smells a little bit like nuttiness, like it smells like nuts just a little bit. That's exactly what you're going for.
Walter 10:44
Sounds good. So now we're gonna start getting the warmed milk added a little bit at a time stirred in. We want it to actually thicken up. So I'm actually gonna turn the heat up just a little bit. So each time each time this gets a little thick, I'm going to go ahead and add another one. Why don't you go ahead and Rebecca once again, pick up the camera and show people what we're doing in here.
Walter 11:10
So we're adding the milk a little bit at a time and mixing it in with the spoon. And it just started to get thick, I'll add a little more milk, you don't want to add it all at once. But then it'll just be a big soupy mess. And it's really hard to stir anyway, because easier to stir if you just kind of keep blending it in blending it in, you can see it going from just thin milk to actually having a little texture to it.
Walter 11:36
So Rebecca was saying that I probably added like the last half of that milk too quickly, because it's really, really thin. I should have slowed down let it thicken up a little bit between each of those stages. So now we're just going to let this sit for a bit and thicken back up. But now maybe not add the milk quite so quickly. I want to eat lobster mac and cheese! So I added it a little fast.
Walter 11:59
So a great way to test your bechémel is with a wooden spoon, you just stick it in there. And then you run your finger down and see if it holds the line. And as you can see this is so that means the bechémel should be ready for the next step. All right, we're gonna turn the heat off.
Walter 12:18
Now it calls for salt, pepper and nutmeg. However, we don't really like nutmeg, even though it's traditional so we're gonna do what about a teaspoon of salt and pepper. About a half a teaspoon of pepper, right?
Walter 12:33
We don't really measure, looks pretty good. And then a teaspoon of salt. I got about a teaspoon of salt and then the cheese right? Yes. So I'm gonna just mix through the salt and pepper first a little bit. I remember the heat is off. The heat is now turned off. And now we're gonna go ahead and add the cheese.
Walter 13:07
And you don't want to use the whisk for this because that cheese will just get all messed up. I'm going to get our wooden spoon back out. And all we're going to do now is melt all of that luscious cheese. Right into the bechémel. Oh my goodness gracious. And you all know what's coming next. We build this bad boy.
Walter 13:33
Okay, look at that. Oh my goodness. Look at that. Oh my god. Oh, yeah. instant replay. How amazing is that? You should always taste everything as you go. Especially when it has cheese. Oh my goodness gracious. Could you just back up more so I can give us a little more pepper. There we go. And a tad more salt. There we go. So we tested that out before we did the other stuff, All right. Alright, let's go back down. There we go.
Walter 14:20
So if you recall, I said I was going to keep that lobster with all the juices in there. So now what I could actually do is add just a little bit of juice into this as well. Which will you know that that butter and garlic and wine that we cooked it in. So first I'm going to just go ahead, reach in with my hand. Just pull the lobster out. Look at that. Look at that lobster. Oh my god. And then what I'll do is I'll just I'll just go ahead and pour in just a little bit of that butter, garlic and wine. Oh yeah, there we go, enhance the flavor.
Walter 15:00
Even more oh my god look at that and next oh my goodness graciou s look at that look at this people. People look at this Oh that's great. Oh wait okay I'm gonna look at this oh my goodness gracious. This is like the best stuff EVER. Lobster mac and cheese in the house. My goodness.
Walter 15:36
All right and then the cavatappi and everything. This is why we we chose a bigger pot as I lose some of the pasta off to the side you didn't see that? You didn't see that at all. In fact this is almost not big enough. Almost. Okay, that's a pound of cavatappi in there I'm just gonna reach over here and grab the ones that fell off to the side. How's that is that everybody?
Rebecca 15:59
A few more right there
Walter 16:00
okay, well Rebecca, as Rebecca knocks over the camera reaching for them. Action shot.
Walter 16:11
Oh people this is. Oh, you need to get Oh people look at this. Lobster mac and cheese. Are you freaking kidding me? Oh, oh. This looks amazing. Wow. Oh, look at that. You don't even need to bake it. We're gonna bake it but you don't even need to bake it. Oh my god. It looks so good. Tell me that doesn't look, I dare one of you to tell me this doesn't look good. I will find you.
Rebecca 17:00
If they're allergic to shellfish they get a pass.
Walter 17:02
No. I don't care if you're allergic to shuffle. Why are you watching this episode? Rebecca just said you get a pass. If you're allergic to shellfish if you're allergic to shellfish. Why in the heck are you watching this episode? Go watch the Ultimate Mac and Cheese one where you make mac and cheese without shellfish.
Walter 17:29
Okay, next step is we're going to take our cup and a half of the Panko bread crumb. We melted two tablespoons of butter to mix in with it. And because you know you can never have too much cheese. We're gonna add this grated cheese. There you go. However much that was. And what you do is you just kind of mix the butter in with the bread crumbs. That's something you may say hey, I don't want to use bread crumb. I don't like to put it on top of it. That's fine. You don't have to. But we're going to put that nice crusty bread crumb layer on top was it it kind of mix it together. But now instead of just being bread and butter now there's actual grated cheese in there. more cheese.
Walter 18:17
Okay, I've got an olive oil spray. And I got a thirteen by nine baking pan right here. So we're going to give it a light spray. We like the olive oil sprays pretty nice. Okay, now last but not least, we're going to add the pasta into here. And this is really a two person job. Just like that and dropping in. Oh yeah. Yeah, all that cheesy goodness. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're not letting any of this go to waste. People. Look at this. Look at this. Get yourself a nice spatula. scrape it all down. I don't know how much you can see of this with the way the cameras angled but scrape every last little bit of that out of there. Oh my goodness.
Walter 19:11
Okay, just kind of, you don't need to mash it down. But I just want to go ahead and at least even it out. Alright, last but not least, just go ahead and cover this up with breadcrumbs. And anything that I dropped on the floor Molly the Wonder dog will make sure she comes in and cleans up the floor for me.
Walter 19:32
And this will go into a 375 oven and if the top isn't quite brown enough for you after it's done, just simply flip the oven over to broil and make it a little bit crispier Mm hmm. So we got a 375 degree oven and we're going to put it in for 30 to 35 minutes. See you soon.
Walter 19:55
And mac and cheese Holy cow. So that was in the oven for 30 minutes. And I didn't actually have to broil it at all the color that you see on top is the actual color that we got out of it. So for 30 minutes, so all that's left to do now is to scoop it out into a bowl. I should probably let it rest for just a couple of minutes. You know, maybe three, four or five minutes, but let's let it rest for a couple minutes and then we're gonna cut into this bad boy
Walter 20:27
All right, folks, here we go. I'm gonna lean in See if you can hear this. Oh, yeah. Are you ready? Are you ready for this? Oh my goodness. Look at this. Look at this. Oh, that is absolutely gorgeous. Coming on into the bowl. Oh, that is a beautiful, beautiful mac and cheese with lobster.Only thing left to do now is taste it.
Walter 21:09
All right. Lobster mac and cheese. Oh man. It's so good. I can smell the butter. The wine. The garlic. I've got a little hunk of lobster in there. I don't know if you can see it. Oh my goodness gracious. It's hot. And also good. Molly standing right at my feet hoping that I drop something.
Walter 21:35
Oh what really makes it, remember I cooked my lobster in the wine, the butter and the garlic and you can taste that coming through. And I added just a little bit of that to the mix. Oh look at that. Look at that little hunk of laughter right there. Oh, Rebecca, Rebecca. We might want to blow on it. It's hot.
Walter 21:58
Mm hmm no Yeah, right. You got some of that wine. You got some of that garlic you got some of that butter coming through. Oh people lobster mac and cheese. You want to do this and then also remember we have the Ultimate Mac and Cheese if you just want the cheese without the shellfish in it.
Walter 22:13
So folks that lobster mac and cheese I hope you enjoyed this. Hey, if you'd liked this episode please subscribe. Click the little bell icon so you'll be notified when we have more episodes. And you know, stay with us you're on worthwhile for you never know what we're gonna do next.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai