Why add nonfat dry milk powder to the brown butter — what does it actually do?

Browning happens when the milk solids in butter — the proteins and sugars that remain after you remove the water and fat — caramelize and undergo Maillard reactions at temperatures above 250°F. Standard unsalted butter is about 80% fat, 18% water, and only 1 to 2% milk solids, which is why it takes patience to get a good brown. Nonfat dry milk powder is almost entirely those same milk solids with the fat and water removed — adding 2 tablespoons introduces a concentrated mass of browning material that caramelizes alongside the butter's own solids. The result is a darker, nuttier, more complex brown butter that achieves a deep walnut hue at around the same time a plain beurre noisette would reach a lighter hazelnut color. In the finished roll, the difference is a background of toasted-caramel depth that plain browned butter approaches but does not quite reach. The technique appears in Eventide's published cookbook and is the single most replicable thing that distinguishes their brown butter from a generic brown butter recipe.

Why does Eventide serve this on a steamed Chinese bao bun instead of a New England split-top roll?

A traditional Connecticut-style lobster roll uses a split-top hot dog bun that gets buttered and griddled until golden on both cut sides, giving a toasted, slightly crispy surface. Eventide's choice of a steamed bao bun inverts that textural equation: instead of a crunchy exterior contrasting with warm lobster, you get a soft, pillowy, slightly yielding bun that lets the lobster filling remain the only textural focus. The bao is also slightly sweet from the milk and sugar in the dough, which complements the brown butter's nuttiness in a way that a plain bread roll does not. The shape matters too: a bao folds like a taco, letting you pile more filling per bite and keeping the lobster from sliding out the way it can in a split-top roll. Andrew Taylor and Mike Wiley were influenced by Chinese-American cooking in Portland's restaurant scene when they opened Eventide — the bao bun was a deliberate choice, not a novelty, and it holds up under the weight of warm buttered lobster better than any baked bread alternative.

Can I use store-bought bao buns instead of making them from scratch?

Yes — frozen bao buns from an Asian grocery work well. Look for plain steamed folded bao (gua bao style, sometimes labeled 'mantou buns' or 'steamed sandwich buns') rather than the filled pork bao. Steam them straight from frozen for 5 to 6 minutes. The texture is slightly less pillowy than a fresh-made bun but fully acceptable, and the time savings is enormous. The recipe is worth making from scratch on a day when you have two hours — the homemade version is noticeably softer and sweeter — but for a weeknight version with good lobster, a store-bought bao gets you most of the experience. Avoid baked buns: a baked milk bun has a firmer, drier structure that does not yield to warm lobster the same way a steamed bun does. If you cannot find any style of bao, a potato roll (Martin's-style) is the closest substitute among conventional bread — its softness and slight sweetness echo the bao's character better than a split-top hot dog bun.

What kind of lobster should I use, and does it need to be live?

Fresh live Maine lobster (Homarus americanus), steamed or boiled yourself, produces the most tender claw and knuckle meat. Pull the claws and knuckles as soon as the shells are cool enough to handle — the texture is at its best within an hour of cooking. If you cannot source live lobster, fresh-picked claw and knuckle meat from a reputable fish counter is the correct substitute. Avoid frozen lobster tails (they are Atlantic or spiny lobster, different species, with a firmer and less sweet texture) and avoid canned lobster (flat flavor, mushy texture). For four rolls you need 1 pound of picked meat — about two 1¼-pound lobsters, or slightly more since smaller lobsters yield less. Claw and knuckle meat are preferable to tail: they are sweeter, more tender, and shred naturally into irregular chunks that sit better in a bao than the cylindrical tail medallions. The knuckle meat, which comes from the joints between the claw and the body, is the most tender part of the lobster — do not discard it.

How do I know when the brown butter is ready — and how do I keep it from burning?

Brown butter happens in three stages after the butter fully melts: the water cooks off (you will hear a subsiding sizzle), then the milk solids — which settle to the bottom and the foam at the surface — begin to color from yellow to golden to amber to brown. With the added milk powder, there is more solid material to color, which makes the transition from golden to properly brown happen faster than in a standard beurre noisette. The signs of readiness for Eventide's version: the foam subsides to almost nothing, the solids at the bottom are a deep amber-brown (not tan, not black), and the aroma shifts from milky to unmistakably nutty — sometimes described as roasted hazelnut. Use a light-colored (stainless steel or enameled) pan so you can see the color of the solids. Remove the pan from the heat the moment you reach deep amber — the residual heat in the pan will continue browning for 30 to 60 seconds after you pull it. If the solids turn dark brown or black, the butter is burnt — acrid-tasting and unusable. Start over: it is a fast failure mode, especially with the extra milk powder, and the only fix is fresh butter.

The lemon juice goes in after the butter browns — why not before?

Adding lemon juice while the butter is still browning does two things you do not want: the water in the juice causes a violent splatter when it hits the hot fat, and the acidity can interfere slightly with the Maillard browning reactions on the milk solids. Adding the juice after you pull the pan from the heat — into finished brown butter — lets it function purely as a finishing acid: it cuts the richness, lifts the nutty aroma, and prevents the butter from tasting flat or heavy. The lemon also arrests the residual cooking slightly, stopping the brown butter from darkening further from the pan's retained heat. About a tablespoon is the right amount for 8 tablespoons of butter and 1 pound of lobster — enough to notice, not enough to make the sauce taste lemony. Swirl or whisk the juice in as you add it, which also helps emulsify the butter slightly.

What sides does Eventide serve with the lobster roll?

At the restaurant, the lobster roll comes with house-made sea salt chips and either house-pickled vegetables or a seasonal relish. The chips are a natural pairing: the crunch of a fried chip plays against the soft bao and tender lobster in a way that fries (also a menu option) are actually too dense to achieve. At home, a lightly dressed coleslaw — made with rice vinegar, not mayonnaise — echoes the acidic pickled element on the restaurant's plate without adding more richness. Alternatively, a simple butter lettuce salad dressed with sherry vinegar and good olive oil cuts the meal's overall richness without competing. Eventide also offers raw oysters as a starter; beginning with two or three briny oysters before a brown butter roll is the best way to eat the way the restaurant intends.

Eventide Oyster Co.’s Brown Butter Lobster Roll

Name: Eventide Oyster Co.'s Brown Butter Lobster Roll (On a Steamed Bao Bun)
Prep time: 1 h 30 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 1 h 50 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: Steamed Bao Buns (makes 6; double for 12):; 1½ tsp active dry yeast; ½ cup warm water (about 110°F); 2 tbsp nonfat dry milk powder; 1 tbsp granulated sugar; 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting; ½ tsp baking powder; ¼ tsp baking soda; ½ tsp fine salt; 1 tbsp neutral oil (grapeseed or vegetable), plus extra for brushing; Brown Butter Lobster Filling:; 8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter; 2 tbsp nonfat dry milk powder; 1 lb cooked Maine lobster meat, preferably claw and knuckle (from about two 1¼-lb lobsters); 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice (about ½ small lemon); Fine salt to taste; To finish:; 2 tbsp fresh chives, finely snipped

Prep time: 1 hr 30 min | Cook time: 20 min | Serves: 4 | Difficulty: Intermediate

Eventide Oyster Co. opened in Portland, Maine in 2012 at 86 Middle Street in the Old Port. Mike Wiley and Andrew Taylor — who run Hugo’s, the Michelin-starred tasting menu restaurant around the corner — wanted a more casual room, somewhere you could eat standing up at a counter and not feel like you were wasting a table. Arlin Smith joined the project and became a partner. Bon Appétit named it the best new restaurant in America in 2013. Wiley and Taylor later won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast, one of the hardest categories in American cooking.

The lobster roll, which has run around $20 at their Portland and Boston locations in recent years, is what the restaurant became famous for. It is not the only thing they do — the oyster selection, the clam chowder, the lobster stew — but it is the thing food writers kept coming back to describe.

The Two Decisions That Changed the Lobster Roll

A Maine lobster roll (cold, with mayonnaise) and a Connecticut lobster roll (warm, with butter) have existed since at least the 1930s. Eventide’s version is a third thing.

The first departure is the brown butter. Connecticut-style rolls use plain melted butter poured over cold lobster; the butter coats but adds no flavor of its own. Eventide browns the butter — a standard enough move — but adds nonfat dry milk powder before browning starts. Regular unsalted butter has only 1 to 2% milk solids, the compounds that actually brown and caramelize. Milk powder is almost entirely those same solids. Adding two tablespoons roughly doubles the amount of browning material in the pan, producing a walnut-colored butter with more depth and complexity than beurre noisette alone. The finished sauce — brown butter, lemon juice, salt — is only three ingredients but has a range that takes several minutes to assemble and seconds to explain.

The second departure is the bun. A griddled hot dog roll is toasted and slightly crispy on the cut surfaces; the crunch is part of the experience. Eventide’s steamed bao is the opposite: soft, yielding, slightly sweet from the milk in the dough. The lobster in warm butter against that pillow is a different relationship than lobster against toasted bread — less contrasty, more unified, the whole roll feeling like one warm thing rather than two separate components. Mike Wiley and Andrew Taylor were drawing on Chinese-American cooking in Portland when they made this choice. The gua bao — the steamed folded bun associated with Taiwanese braised pork — is the structural model.

Making the Bao Dough

The dough uses nonfat dry milk powder a second time (the same ingredient as the brown butter, which is either convenient or deliberate depending on how you want to read it). The milk powder in the dough enriches the bun, making it softer and slightly sweeter than plain steamed mantou. The baking powder and baking soda give it a fine, even crumb under steam — without them the bun can be dense and chewy rather than light and pillowy.

A few technique notes:

The oil brush before folding is necessary. Without it, the two layers fuse completely during steaming and tear when you try to open the bun. A thin brush of neutral oil (not butter — butter burns; not olive oil — the flavor intrudes) is enough to keep the layers separable.

Parchment under each bun is not optional. Direct contact between bun and steamer rack leaves grid marks and causes sticking. A small square of parchment under each bun solves both problems.

Do not open the steamer early. Steam buns are leavened partly by trapped steam — opening the lid during cooking causes the expanding buns to deflate suddenly and they do not recover. Wait the full 8 to 10 minutes and the 2-minute rest before opening.

The Lobster

Claw and knuckle meat from Maine lobster (Homarus americanus) is the correct cut for this roll. The claw is sweet and tender, shredding naturally into irregular pieces that pile into a bao without the cylindrical uniformity of a tail medallion. The knuckle — the joint between claw and body — is often discarded by home cooks and is the most tender and sweet section of the lobster. Do not waste it.

The lobster should be warm when it hits the brown butter, not cold from the refrigerator. Cold lobster added to brown butter drops the temperature of the sauce, the butter goes opaque and thick, and the sauce never quite comes back together. If you are working with pre-cooked lobster, warm it gently in a small amount of water or a covered pan over low heat to around 110°F before adding it to the browned butter. If you steam the lobster yourself and extract the meat while still hot, you can add it to the brown butter immediately.

The warm lobster in warm brown butter needs only 2 to 3 minutes over the lowest possible heat — just enough to equalize temperatures and coat the meat. Any more than that and the lobster starts to tighten and lose the silk that makes claw meat worth the effort.

Don’t Throw Away the Bodies

If you cook whole lobsters to pick the claw and knuckle meat, you are left with the bodies, shells, and tail (if you reserve it). Do not throw them out — they are the makings of a second meal. Simmer the shells with aromatics and tomato to build a stock, and you are most of the way to a lobster bisque. Reserved tail medallions, which are firmer than the claw meat this roll calls for, are the right cut for a classic Lobster Newburg — the sherry-and-cream preparation Delmonico’s made famous — so a single batch of lobsters can give you both the roll tonight and a second dish tomorrow.

Eventide Oyster Co. is a trademark of its owner, used here only to describe the dish this recipe recreates. This is an independent copycat written in our own words — Copycat Spices is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Eventide Oyster Co..

Eventide Oyster Co.'s Brown Butter Lobster Roll (On a Steamed Bao Bun)

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