First thing to do when your lobster is served is announce whether it is a male or a female. How?

The swimmerets, the small feather like tissue underneath the tail, will tell you. Analyze the first pair of swimmerets closest to the body. A male has a hard and bony feel, while the female is soft and feathery. A distinct rectangular shield is evident only in the female. It is located between her second pair of walking legs. She stores the sperm here after mating until she is ready to lay her eggs. The female will have a wider tail than a comparably-sized male to help her carry all the eggs.

1. Start by breaking off the legs. Hold the lobster on its back and gently twist and pull off the legs. The legs serve as a side delicacy!
2. Remove the claws by twisting and tearing them off at the first joint (the crusher claw is usually bigger than the tearing claw).
3. Remove the loose part of the claw and check for small tasty morsels!
4. Take your nutcracker and break off the large section of claw's tip. Inside is the meat.
5. Get the meat from the tip of the claw out to the larger open end with your forefinger (Inedible parts: mouth, antennae, antennules, and rostrum or beak).
6. Grab the tail portion with one hand and the back of the lobster with the other hand. Twist and separate the two sections.
7. Next, turn to the end of the tail which has small flippers at the base. These have tasty mini-chunks of meat, but you have to dig deep.
8. The best part of the lobster (for some is the claw meat) is the tail meat. Then insert your fingers into the flipper end to push the tail meat out intact through the larger opening.
9. Peel off the top of the tail and remove the digestive tract before eating the rest of the tail meat.
10. Discover small chunks of meat inside the hard shell body of the lobster.
11. Venture into the gills, the circulation system. Find green "tomalley" (the digestive gland) and in a female lobster, red "coral" or "roe" (the unfertilized eggs which hard-core lobster lovers crave).