Newport Lobster Stuffing

We're cooking with Laura Blackwell, author of The Fisherman's Table, who will be making a quintessential Rhode Island dish perfect to bring to Thanksgiving featuring lobster.

Newport Lobster Stuffing

Ingredients:
Half loaf sliced bread – potato bread works best
One cup onion chopped (about one large yellow or white onion)
Three stalks celery chopped
1/4 cup Craisins
One stick melted butter
One can chicken or vegetable stock – though you shouldn’t use it all!
2 or 3  1¼-2 lb Newport Lobster Shack Lobsters
Two tablespoons melted butter
Paprika for color

Directions:
Take bread and set out to get stale for 24 hours. Sprinkle lightly with paprika (this will give your dish that sought after ‘lobster’ color.  Remember to flip so both sides get stale. (If you don’t have time for this, you can toast the bread instead.)  Cube the bread into roughly half inch cubes.  
Pre-heat the oven to 350.  Sautee the onion and celery in a lot of butter until they become translucent.  Don’t brown!  
Cook the lobster by putting just an inch of water in the bottom of a pot with a tight lid.  Bring the water to a boil, then put in the lobsters. 

Get the lid on there somehow!  Once water re-gains a boil, cook for only ten minutes. (They will get cooked further in the oven.) Immediately rinse the lobsters in cold water until cool enough to touch. 

Shuck them and chop the meat up into chunks. Remember there’s good meat in all those knuckles!
Put the bread cubes, Craisins, and onion stuff, into a bowl. 

Melt the remainder of the stick of butter and add it, mashing it around with your hands to mix it well.  Add stock ½ cup at a time until the stuffing is moist and sticking together, but NOT SOGGY.  Add in the lobster chunks and mix it up.  Only handle it as much as you have to.

Put in a casserole dish. Drizzle a few tablespoons of melted butter on the top to make it brown. Sprinkle with paprika if desired. 

Bake in 350 degree oven for 20-30 minutes, until the top becomes golden brown.  If you are nervous about the lobster being all the way cooked – use a thermometer and check that the internal temperature reaches 145 degrees F. 

Enjoy!