Broiled Lobster Tail with Brown Butter Sauce

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup unsalted raw hazelnuts
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons minced shallots
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
• 1/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest
• Pinch of salt
• 2 lobster tails, fresh or frozen

Directions

1. If your lobster tails came from the freezer, use the thawing window to make the hazelnut brown butter sauce. Set the hazelnuts in a small skillet over medium to medium high heat, and toast them until they smell nutty and pick up a little color. Tip them out of the skillet into the middle of a clean, dry dish towel.
2. Fold the towel around the hazelnuts and rub them against each other to loosen as much of the dark papery skin as you can. Chop the nuts roughly, then keep them nearby.
3. For the brown butter, put the butter in a small stainless steel saucepan over medium heat and let it melt. Stainless steel is your friend here, because you can actually see the color changing instead of guessing.
4. Once melted, the butter will bubble and foam, then settle down. The milk solids will sink to the base of the pan.
5. Keep the pan over the heat, and those milk solids will gradually turn brown, giving the butter that deep, toasty aroma.
6. When most of the solids have browned, take the pan off the heat. Pour the butter through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl so the browned solids are left behind.
7. Scoop out 2 tablespoons of the brown butter and reserve it plain for brushing over the lobster before it goes under the broiler.
8. Stir the chopped hazelnuts, parsley, shallots, lemon zest and salt into the brown butter that remains. Set the sauce aside.
9. Move an oven rack to the middle position, then preheat the broiler. Cover a broiling pan or roasting pan with foil.
10. With kitchen shears or sturdy scissors, cut along the top of each lobster shell from the open end down toward the base of the tail.
11. To make the shell a little more cooperative, turn the tail over in your palm and give it a squeeze to crack the translucent underside.
12. Hold both sides of the shell and ease them apart by about an inch or two.
13. Slide your finger carefully between the meat and the shell, loosening the lobster meat from the inside.
14. Lift the meat gently up through the opening you made, leaving it connected at the tail end, so it rests on top of the shell. Arrange the tails on the foil-covered broiling pan.
15. Draw the lobster meat back so you can reach as much surface as possible, then brush it with the reserved plain brown butter.
16. Broil the lobster tails for 7 to 10 minutes, using less time for smaller tails, until the meat is cooked through and the shells have turned bright red. A meat thermometer should register 145 degrees F when the lobster is ready.
17. When the tails are finished, take them out of the oven and transfer them to serving plates. Spoon the brown butter hazelnut sauce over the lobster meat.