Lobster freshness in your grocery store tank is not what you think it is

Have you ever walked through the meat and seafood department of your neighborhood supermarket and noticed a dark, often scaly tank full of live lobsters? Although they are becoming less common, live lobster aquariums are still in use today. Frankly, you might want to reconsider buying one of these lonely-looking crabs. Not only are these tank lobsters miserable, but they don’t taste very well due to their frequent neglect and stress.

Regionalism is the key to finding quality seafood. If you live near the coast, you are more likely to find fresh lobster. However, if you’re near the cornfields of the Midwest and far from the ocean, you’ll want to avoid the lobster tank at the grocery store, where live lobsters can languish for weeks. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t get fresh lobster. You’ll have to find another way to get them, one that’s much better than buying lobster from a suspicious-looking tank at the far end of your grocery store.

Read more: 12 Underrated Types Of Fish You Should Try At Least Once

There Is A Lot Of Conflicting Information About Lobster Storage

If you are familiar with the many types of lobsters, you probably also know that freezing live lobsters is not recommended for scientific reasons. However, it might not be for the reasons you’ve heard, like how lobsters suddenly undergo a fatal hormonal breakdown in their carapace just before they die. Live lobsters can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours if necessary, but they should never be frozen as doing so will make the meat soft, tasteless and difficult to handle.

While it’s true that lobsters can spoil quickly, believing that you have to keep them alive until it’s time to prepare them is highly controversial and frankly a little scary. In fact, the grocery store tank originated from a misunderstanding about handling live lobsters and a concern that they would rot quickly. The idea was somewhat “to save the customer’s life you have to save the lobster’s life”.

Not only is this not entirely accurate, but some of the conditions in which lobsters are kept are unpopular with consumers. A combination of mold, decay and algae results in a tasty and sad lobster. However, if you don’t live on the Maine coast, you don’t have to worry. Live lobsters are available for shipment through Internet sellers almost everywhere in the country. For finding and buying fresh lobster, services like LobsterAnywhere are an excellent resource.

The Meat From Tank Lobsters Is Often Subpar

These supermarket lobster tanks have sparked widespread controversy and, more recently, an online petition calling for a complete ban on keeping live lobsters in commercial settings. To slow their metabolism, lobsters are kept cold and edible, although this semi-cryogenic hellscape does nothing to enhance the crustaceans’ freshness or quality. In reality, the inevitable atrophy caused by keeping lobsters in captivity—sometimes for weeks—actually causes the flesh to deteriorate and shrink.

The fishing industry refers to these sluggish lobsters as “sleepers” and it’s best to stay away from them altogether. Simply put, have you ever seen a lobster tank in the grocery store and not thought it was halfway to lobster heaven? Probably not. You can either travel to where they live (we mean, do you have a Maine lobster?) or have them shipped to you via express mail to meet your lobster needs. Ultimately, satisfied lobsters have great flavor and, happily, supermarket lobsters don’t exist. He who is ready is ready.

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