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Well, what do you think is in that luscious, sought-after green tomalley, anyway?

The way I cook them (and I get raves fro the cognoscienti) I cook so that the red roe at the base of the tail is still black and runny. If it is red and solid, you just ruined a lobster. (DON'T cook the big boys by the pound! - 20 minutes for a 5-pounder is enough!)

As far as tomalley, I prep the cooked lobsters as follows:

Reserve a bowl of the boil liquid (seasoned and salted to tasted like weak broth). Rip off the tail, splash in the broth to rinse off the yucky crap. Pour out the body yuck, and rinse with hot tap water.

Prep the claws for by-hand eating at the table (Julia Child TV secret - beg me and I'll share). Snip up the lower side of the tail for table eating.

No one has EVER asked for tomalley. They are just happy to have a bigger lobster. And that is my best advice. BIG. Better to split a 3-pounder that to have two 1.5 pound crawfish. Better a 6 than two 3s. You can then eat the leg and body meat like a crab's. Really.

Mmmm, I'm smelling the butter and the fire from Caribbean grilled lobsters now - mops and mops of butter over split lobsters. Oh, my.

Well, OK - begging to know if there is a different "secret" from the way I do it. If you take hold of the little pincer and kind of rock it back and forth, it will loosen the cartilage thingy that goes down inside there and the meat comes right out, whole. I make lobster salads and have to do it that way. It's just like big crabs, except a litle harder to pull. Is there another way?