Broiled lobster tail is a simple yet elegant dish, featuring tender, succulent meat with a golden, buttery crust. It's naturally sweet, briny flavor pairs beautifully with melted butter and fresh lemon, making it perfect for special occasions or an indulgent treat.
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If you love this easy Broiled Lobster tail recipe, try my Lobster Mac and Cheese dish. It's another perfect recipe for date night to enjoy.
Why This Recipe Works
Homemade Lobster Tails are cheaper to eat at home. While lobster tails are incredibly tasty, when you order them out at a restaurant, you will pay an arm and a leg. Instead, save a bunch of your hard earned money and learn to broil lobster tails at home with ease once you've tried this easy recipe.
Broiling the lobster tails is the best way to make them. The high heat gets them nice and tender so every garlic lemon flavored bite just melts in your mouth.
Let's Gather The Ingredients
- Lobster Tails: I used frozen tails that I thawed out
- Butter: stick to unsalted since we are adding salt
- Herbs and spices: Garlic cloves, salt, black pepper, fresh parsley, and optional cayenne pepper
How To Make Broiled Lobster tails
- Step 1: Place lobster tails on the cutting board and use kitchen shears to cut down the center of the shell to the tail fin to butterfly lobster tails.
- Step 2: Once you've cut down to the fin, turn the shears out, and make a small cut, and repeat going the opposite direction, making another cut.
- Step 3: Use your fingers to loosen the meat.
- Step 4: Pull the meat out of the butterflied lobster tails and set on top of the shell.
- Step 5: In a small bowl, melt the butter. Add garlic, parsley, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper to the melted butter and stir.
- Step 6: Transfer tails to baking sheet.
- Step 7: Add salt, pepper, and use a pastry brush to brush lemon garlic butter sauce on top of the tail meat. Broil tails, then apply more sauce and broil again.
- Step 8: Garnish with parsley and enjoy your perfect lobster tail.
Recipe Tips
- Cooking time can vary greatly depending on the size of your tails and the temperature of your oven, so keep an eye on them and always check the internal temperature with an instant-read thermometer to ensure they're done cooking.
- While you could use plain butter, making your own flavored butter with herbs and spices really helps amp up the deliciousness factor of these lobster tails even more.
- If you don't have fresh garlic cloves, add some garlic powder to the butter mixture.
- Reserve a few tablespoons of butter mixture for dipping.
Recipe Faq's
It's best to slow thaw your lobster tails before you plan to cook them, place your lobster tails in the refrigerator on a plate the day before. To speed up this process place the tails in a large ziplock freezer bag sealed and place in a bowl of ice cold water
.
Your tails are done when the color of the meat turns from translucent to white or opaque, lobster tail is done when the internal temp is 140-145 degrees you don't want to overcook as it will become tough and chewy. Keep in mind tails will continue to cook after you remove them from the heat source.
You want the oven rack to be about 6-8 inches away. Close enough to get cooked yet not burnt.
Serve alongside a Filet Mignon with some roasted broccoli and ciabatta bread for the perfect dinner!
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Broiled Lobster Tails with Garlic Lemon Butter
Equipment
Ingredients
- 3- 6 ounce lobster tails thawed
- 6 tablespoons butter
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- Pinch of cayenne pepper optional
- 1 1/2 teaspoons Lemon juice
- salt
- pepper
- Fresh chopped parsley
Instructions
- In a small bowl melt butter, garlic, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper. Reserve 1/3 of the mixture for dipping.
- Using kitchen shears cut down the shell to the fin, once at the fin turn the shears and make a tiny cut, then turn the shears the opposite direction and make another tiny cut. (see pics above in the post for reference) Slide your fingers under the shell and loosen the meat. Pull meat out of the shell and place it on top of the shell.
- Preheat the broiler and move the oven rack about 6-8 inches below the broiler.
- Season with salt and pepper and brush garlic butter sauce over the top of the meat.
- Broil 5 minutes, then brush more garlic butter sauce over the top. Broil another 5 minutes, or until white and opaque and internal temp reaches 140 degrees.
- Garnish with fresh chopped parsley
3/4 cube or 6 tablespoons of butter 🙂
BROILED LOBSTER TAILS WITH GARLIC LEMON BUTTER - under ingredients, I’m not sure what you mean by 3/4 cube of butter. Please clarify. Thank you.