keeping lobsters alive in my car
 

I have a big road trip planned in a few weeks for New England. One of the final destinations is Maine so I thought I'd buy some fresh lobsters and bring them back home to Pennsylvania.

I did some google searches and found that I can use ice packs and wet seaweed to keep them a live, but only for about 24 hours. I need to keep them a live for at least 1 to 2 days since I plan on making a few more sightseeing stops on the way back from Maine.

How are lobsters transported across country? I was thinking about making a salt water ice bath for the lobsters. Would that keep them alive longer? I would obviously have to change out the water / add more ice on the way back to keep the temperatures low.

Also, when I get home, I don't plan on eating all of them at once. I'd like to freeze them, but I'm not sure if I should gut or cook them before freezing. Can I just stick them into the freezer?

I see them at the local grocery stores and/or restaurants all the time; perhaps you should ask the proprietors of such establishments that house these lobsters how they care for them.

I doubt that they get a daily shipment of five new lobsters to display in the tank, so they must be able to survive for a while given proper conditioning.

Being refrigerated slows their metabolism and makes them logy and docile. So my suggestion would be to keep them in a well iced cooler.

That said: these are live critters you're talking about. I'm not going to go all PETA on you here, but you need to bear in mind how well you'd fare going a couple days without food or attention on a road trip. Generally you want to buy your lobster as soon as possible to when you're going to be eating them. The part about "not sure I want to eat them right away" is the most worrisome part of this. They don't keep. And you DON'T want them dying on you before cooking--that's food poisoning waiting to happen.

I would guess aeration and temperature are key. Also, small, plastic models of deep sea divers, shipwrecks, and mermaids, if my aquarium efforts of youth hold any value.

I'm a courier for an overnight delivery service, and I can tell you that even the most carefully packaged lobsters only have a 60/40 shot at making it 24 hours. Any more than that, well...

I end up delivering them to grocery stores and restaurants primarily - the complaints of dead lobster are constant. From what I've seen, the best kept ones are packaged in a styrofoam cooler, on ice, with another box to hold the cooler (because the lobster...y... water ALWAYS finds its way out of the cooler somehow).

I'm a back-up food and beverage controller for a restaurant that gets live maine lobsters several times a week. During dinner we have a visual presentation to each of our guests including the lobsters. This is at room temperature., so keeping lobsters alive is very important.

Your situation sounds tricky since you will be stopping to see the sights instead of driving right back.

Lobsters can stay alive outside water for a long time given that their gills are damp and varies on the quality of the lobster. Our lobsters are delivered to us in heavy duty waxed cardboard with frozen gel packs inside with the lobsters covered in pages of wet newspapers (free alt news weeklies :) ). With a tank they will last a long time - it's been so long since we had one - I'd say a week. In a refrigerator, covered as discussed above with damp cloths or paper, I'd give them a three days at most. They might give you weak lobsters and find them dying intimidately.

When your lobster stops swearing at you, stops moving, and its tail starts to separate (you see the blue squishy muscle in between tail and body) you know your has passed. I would recommend blanching the lobster before freezing it. I don't recommend eating lobsters that have been long dead - dead lobsters kill other lobsters in the tank and can't be good for you.

I hope this helps. If you have any more questions, just ask.

Given the extra couple of days and everything discussed above, I don't think that it'll be worth it for you to bring the lobsters back. The ones in the local fish market will probably taste better than the well-traveled Maine ones.

Enjoy your lobsters while you are in Maine, and bring back the maple syrup instead.

after being at the Fancy Food Show in NYC... there are a few companies that will deliver Live Maine lobsters

http://www.mainelobsterdirect.com/

a much better idea than transporting them yourself since you want to do more sightseeing.

wait so the dead lobster while decomposing kills other live lobsters?

Yes. Same applies to various other seafood types like crab as well.

I'm sorry, haxor, but I see very bad, very smelly, idea written all over this. Nothing good is going to come of it. Unless, of course, you like giving lobsters mouth to mouth resucitation.

Don't they still sell those little spoons, thimbles, shotglasses, plates, keychains and whatnot with Maine symbology? I'm thinkin' that'd probably be a better souvenir.

um.. one no one has mentioned - why not get em, cook em, freeze em, and transport them frozen? if the cooked lobster is frozen rock solid and kept that way (annoying but entirely feasable for a road trip) they would arrive in PA in fine shape - even fresher than transporting them home before cooking them.

(one night at an extended stay america instead of the hotel you might have been at is probably the easiest way to be able to cook while on vacation - its way too hard to get a solid freeze on ice in a cooler if you were to say, cook them at a campsite over a fire..)

Just put 'em in the seat next to you and give 'em a few beers.