Hmmm... lobster stock

With five lobsters' worth of shells, I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to make lobster stock.

Stocks, in the broth sense, are not that different than stocks, in the NYSE sense. You make an investment; they give you a return. Chicken and fish stocks give you a decent yield of flavor for your time and effort. Veal stock or demi-glace, with its roasting step, is a huge pain to make. It's heavenly stuff, but only if your everyday repertoire includes a lot of gravies or brown sauces. Turkey stock - now there's some bang for your buck. It's easier to make than even chicken stock and about five times as savory. I like rice noodles in turkey broth, with a few shreds of meat and fresh cilantro, almost more than I like the Thanksgiving turkey the night before. And my roast turkey is quite excellent, if I do say so myself.

But where would lobster stock fall in the spectrum?

My misadventures with the stock, attempted bisque, and resulting seafood/corn chowder-like concoction are chronicled below. I know this blog only has, like, 3 confirmed readers but if anyone out there knows where I went wrong, please advise!

Here's what I did: Toasted the shells in hot oil. Added mirepoix (onions, celery, carrots) and 1 tbsp of tomato paste. Deglazed with a good glug of white wine. Added enough water to cover the shells. Added peppercorns, bay, thyme, salt. Simmered for 2 hours. Strained.

The stock came out smelling pretty good but looking like dirty dishwater. Others stocks can too, though, so I wasn't overly concerned. But how to turn it into soup? I started with a clean pot, sweated some onion and celery in butter. Added flour to make roux. In the absence of cognac, I splashed in a little port. Added lobster stock, water, cream. Brought it to a simmer.

It didn't seem like a finished soup to me. Hmmm... I added some corn (Trader Joe's frozen sweet corn - the best stuff I've found to compare to fresh).

[Postscript: The next day, I added some diced potatoes. A little better. I considered poaching some shrimp in it and adding some green herbs, perhaps something like cilantro or dill to give it some freshness, some relief from the richness, but then decided it was a Frankensteinian lost cause.]

My soup was okay and definitely edible, but it just wasn't good in that "wow, I want more" kind of way. It wasn't even as good as something from Hale and Hearty. I was extremely demoralized. Considering the amount of time, work and mess involved, lobster stock / soup just doesn't seem to be worth the effort.

Where did I go wrong? It was savory for sure - the umami practically slapped you in the face. My brother opined that perhaps the soup was too thin for such strong flavor. (It stubbornly resisted thickening, even with two rounds of roux and the starch from the potatoes. At one point, I cheated by adding a little cornstarch slurry but that's, at best, a jury-rig for a single meal.)

Maybe lobster stock is one of those things that you freeze into ice-cube trays and use very sparingly, while cooking things like risotto. Maybe you can only make it with uncooked lobster shells.

Dunno - I'm stumped.