Lobster Used To Be Cheap — Here's How That Changed

[Potoooooooo]

http://io9.com/lobster-used-to-be-cheap-heres-how-that-changed-1705612697



Even if you don’t enjoy lobster (and I don’t, particularly), more than perhaps any other food it’s synonymous with a certain kind of luxury. But it wasn’t always that way. In fact, for a long time it was just the opposite.

In response to a piece on surprisingly common things that used to be status symbols, a discussion kicked off about things that had just the opposite trajectory. Particularly lobster, which just a few generations ago, often had a much less luxurious reputation:

 

[Keith&Co.]

About 200 years ago, prisoners in a Massachusetts jail rioted when the Warden tried to save money by feeding them fresh lobster.

You'd have thought he was making them eat insects or something....

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I don't get lobster. Any meat you need to dunk in fat before eating is not a quality meat.

 

[Hickdive]

Oysters used to be a cheap food of the poor too in Europe until disease all but wiped out the native beds.

I am partial to lobster (lightly boiled, grind of black pepper, squeeze of lemon) but I won't pay shop prices for it and only eat it when I catch my own. Also, a lot of lobsters you see for sale are tiny, and although they're legal size, I would never land one so small.

 

[none]

About 200 years ago, prisoners in a Massachusetts jail rioted when the Warden tried to save money by feeding them fresh lobster.

You'd have thought he was making them eat insects or something....

lobsters are the cockroaches of the ocean...

 

[thebeave]

Never got the lobster thing. It just seemed like I was eating a trilobite or something. Blech...

 

[none]

really they are horrible creatures but tasty to me nonetheless.

 

[fast]

About 200 years ago, prisoners in a Massachusetts jail rioted when the Warden tried to save money by feeding them fresh lobster.

You'd have thought he was making them eat insects or something....

lobsters are the cockroaches of the ocean...

Wow. Such imagery. In 7 words too.

It's amazing how views can be so easily created and learned. I wonder how many of my own views are a product of my own creation. I wonder if a mother could turn a young child against ice cream by giving ugly faces and would that child have a negative view even in face of peer enjoyment.

 

[scombrid]

Farm raised salmon was cheap when it first started hitting the market in the late 1990s. Fillets could often be had for $3 per pound at major chains and I used to buy whole fish (without head and guts) from Farmer Jack for $0.99 per pound. I got a lot of meals out of a $10 hunk of fish when I was in school and living on a $30/week food budget. Now stores are pretty proud of the farm raised salmon.

I don't recollect salmon being much of a feature on restaurant menus either back in the day. Demand was for white flavorless fish and oily stinky salmon was too fishy.

 

[NobleSavage]

Lobsters are way too much work for such a little piece of meat. I also don't like the idea of boiling them alive.

 

[Underseer]

Lobsters are way too much work for such a little piece of meat. I also don't like the idea of boiling them alive.

Personally, I dislike eating arthropods of any kind.

However, I find the "too much work for too little meat" complaint to be funny.

I don't like eating ribs (e.g. beef, pork, etc.) because it's too much work for too little meat and just makes a big mess when you try to eat it, but I love eating chicken wings precisely because it's a lot of work for a little meat and makes a big mess when you try to eat it.

 

[fast]

Lobsters are way too much work for such a little piece of meat. I also don't like the idea of boiling them alive.

Personally, I dislike eating arthropods of any kind.

However, I find the "too much work for too little meat" complaint to be funny.

I don't like eating ribs (e.g. beef, pork, etc.) because it's too much work for too little meat and just makes a big mess when you try to eat it, but I love eating chicken wings precisely because it's a lot of work for a little meat and makes a big mess when you try to eat it.

Ribs, too little meat? U b git n rong 1s

 

[Potoooooooo]

Lobsters are way too much work for such a little piece of meat.

Fuchsia Dunlop refers to that as the grapple factor and it is one of my main dislikes in food. If I have to fiddle with a bunch of shells or bones forget it

 

[Lugubert]

I also don't like the idea of boiling them alive.

I suppose that lobsters work like crayfish. Boiling is actually a humane method: they're immediately stunned by the boiling water, and die before regaining consciousness.

On salmon: Long ago, farm workers in northern Sweden used to have a contract clause that said that they didn't have to eat salmon for dinner more than 6 days a week.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Personally, I dislike eating arthropods of any kind.

However, I find the "too much work for too little meat" complaint to be funny.

I don't like eating ribs (e.g. beef, pork, etc.) because it's too much work for too little meat and just makes a big mess when you try to eat it, but I love eating chicken wings precisely because it's a lot of work for a little meat and makes a big mess when you try to eat it.

Ribs, too little meat? U b git n rong 1s

Yes.
You can cut every other rib very close to the bone, then that leaves double the meat on every other other rib.

 

[credoconsolans]

It still is cheap for the people who catch them and process them.

I also don't like the idea of boiling them alive.

I suppose that lobsters work like crayfish. Boiling is actually a humane method: they're immediately stunned by the boiling water, and die before regaining consciousness.

On salmon: Long ago, farm workers in northern Sweden used to have a contract clause that said that they didn't have to eat salmon for dinner more than 6 days a week.

Reminds me of that scene in the movie Mystic Pizza. The girl's mother works on the docks processing lobster catches. So lobster is always boiling away on a pot on their stove. The daughter meets up with and dates a very wealthy guy she meets on the island and when invited over to his parent's mansion for dinner, she's dismayed to find out the main course for dinner is lobster.

 

[ronburgundy]

Lobster is actually far less work than most dishes. Its' just that all the work is usually given to the eater to do rather than the cook. Thus, as someone who cooks for myself and my wife, it isn't a big deal. You throw them in water, then pull them out. If you know what you're doing, a few strategically placed snaps gets you all the claw and tail meat in 30 seconds. Don't bother with the legs. Just don't forget that delicious green goo in the head cavity, which tastes like inner parts of an oyster.

Also, don't throw the shells away. Snip them up with kitchen shears and put them back in the pot with fresh water (just enough to submerge them) and make a lobster stock. Reduced lobster stock with a touch of cream is an amazing sauce for veggies, pasta, or even as a pizza sauce (either a veggie pizza or one topped with seafood, like clams, shrimp, or smoked salmon).


Other foods that used to be cheap but now are not are cuts of beef and pork that required long and slow cooking, such as brisket, short-ribs, pork belly, ox-tail, beef-cheeks. Like lobster, most of these are not being cooked at home because of the "work", but all the hippest restaurants are serving them, leaving little for the retail consumer to buy. Most hipster restaurants are more likely to have beef brisket or cheeks than any cut of steak, and pork belly rather than tenderloin. Its annoying because I figured out 20 years ago that those "tough" cuts were far superior and tastier than steak and loin and don't require much "work" just waiting time, but now they cost me 3 times what they did before.

 

[fast]

Ribs, too little meat? U b git n rong 1s

Yes.
You can cut every other rib very close to the bone, then that leaves double the meat on every other other rib.

Hahahaha. You get credit for effort.

 

[J842P]

Other foods that used to be cheap but now are not are cuts of beef and pork that required long and slow cooking, such as brisket, short-ribs, pork belly, ox-tail, beef-cheeks. Like lobster, most of these are not being cooked at home because of the "work", but all the hippest restaurants are serving them, leaving little for the retail consumer to buy. Most hipster restaurants are more likely to have beef brisket or cheeks than any cut of steak, and pork belly rather than tenderloin. Its annoying because I figured out 20 years ago that those "tough" cuts were far superior and tastier than steak and loin and don't require much "work" just waiting time, but now they cost me 3 times what they did before.

I guess you now feel the hipster's pain of knowing about something before it was cool.

 

[credoconsolans]

Other foods that used to be cheap but now are not are cuts of beef and pork that required long and slow cooking, such as brisket, short-ribs, pork belly, ox-tail, beef-cheeks. Like lobster, most of these are not being cooked at home because of the "work", but all the hippest restaurants are serving them, leaving little for the retail consumer to buy. Most hipster restaurants are more likely to have beef brisket or cheeks than any cut of steak, and pork belly rather than tenderloin. Its annoying because I figured out 20 years ago that those "tough" cuts were far superior and tastier than steak and loin and don't require much "work" just waiting time, but now they cost me 3 times what they did before.

Include on that list, skirt steak. Used to be fajitas were something you cooked up from a tough piece of beef and could cheaply feast on it and tortillas and beans.

Now that it's a world-wide popular Tex Mex dish, price for skirt steak has gone up considerably.