Hacker News Reader

Comment by droithomme | Hacker News Reader

> the garbage parts of the food

Clever marketers have convinced people to pay top dollar for giant sea insects like lobster and crab, and then to mask the weird insect flavor (smells like lightly rotting tissue) by bathing them in melted butter.

Marketers have also convinced people to pay top dollar for intrinsically worthless diamonds.

Good marketers are extremely valuable.

View on HN

People blend lobster into butter just so they can make other things taste like delicious sea insects. And it works so well because butter carries flavors really well while being pretty mild itself. It's the last thing you'd use to mask flavors.

Fresh shellfish is delicious and doesn't require anything. I'm going to speculate that you didn't grow up near the ocean. I catch and cook (or in the case of clams, don't even cook) my own, and it's at its most delicious with nothing added.

> giant sea insects like lobster and crab

Technically, lobster and crab are crustaceans, not insects ;)

that's not technically, that's arbitrarily

I mean, I'm using the commonly accepted taxonomical classification…

The idea both are arthropods is certainly a fact, but the idea they are significantly different is contraindicated by numerous DNA studies at the present.

Crustaceans make up an entire subphylum, while insects are a class within a different subphylum. That would seem to indicate they are more differentiated than mammals and fish.

Things have changed. You might like to take a look at https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08742.

Nope. "Our results strongly support Pancrustacea" which is in line with the taxonomic hierarchy I was making reference to.

Thai crab fried rice or crab soup beg to differ.

I can’t defend lobster.

In Boston it's still possible to buy lobster literally out of the back of a truck.

Lobster was so plentiful off the coast of New England that it was historically a common man's food -- marketing elevated its status significantly.

Not in Europe. Lobster has always been an upper-class food, since the 16th - 17th century.

Good article here: https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/xy7vzw/lobsters-deli...

You should really buy better, fresher crab.

It's not bad at all. However, one of my favorite crab dishes is 간장게장.

if you're curious, it's https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/ganjang-gejang or "Raw crabs marinated in soy sauce"

I've never in my life eaten crab or lobster with butter. Is this some retarded American thing?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com