The Review Connection | Review: Hancock Gourmet Lobster

Hancock Gourmet Lobster

Epicurean Lobster and Seafood Dishes from Maine to Your Front Door

Located in Cundy's Harbor and Topsham, Maine, Cal Hancock founded Hancock Gourmet Lobster Company in 2000. Specializing in gourmet, all-natural Maine lobster and seafood products that are easy to prepare and eat, they have received numerous prestigious awards. Hancock Gourmet Lobster offers live lobsters and fresh products such as lobster salad in addition to a plethora of frozen prepared gourmet entrees. Hancock Gourmet Lobster is unique and different from other gourmet food lines on the market because all their products are made out of Maine Lobster and local ingredients. Everything is prepared daily in small batches to preserve the integrity of long-held recipes and none of their products have preservatives, chemicals, or colorings. All their prepared foods are easy to prepare, but elegant to present. Hancock Gourmet Lobster makes eating lobster easy, fun and delicious.

Cal was inspired to launch Hancock Gourmet Lobster since she has always wanted to open her own business. As a child, she worked for her grandmother’s lobster restaurant, The Ogunquit Lobster Pound, in Ogunquit, Maine, and found it fun to help folks learn how to eat lobster and clams. After spending many years living in the Midwest, Cal returned to Maine to revisit her passion and start her business. While there were many vendors who shipped live lobster around the country, not many of them made value-added products out of lobster. Cal shares, “Having lived away from Maine, Hancock Gourmet Lobster I heard from a lot of people about how they loved lobster, but hated the hassle of dealing with a live one and dropping it in a pot of boiling water. My thought was to create a company that offered great lobster products that arrived without the fuss.” Hancock Gourmet Lobster does all the work for you as their products are easy, convenient, and delicious. For an easy yet deliciously fresh dinner, the Maine Clambake is a version of their popular dinner-in-a-bag concept. Each bag contains two lobster tails, a dozen mussels, a dozen clams, eight shrimp and a dozen baby potatoes drenched in an herbed lemon butter sauce. It is packaged in a large foil bag that can be cooked on the grill or in the oven and makes for an easy dinner for two.

While Cal was never a classically trained cook, she simply had a deep passion and love for cooking as her maternal grandmother was a fantastic cook. Their products are inspired by family recipes, developed by Cal and executive chef Kevin Messier, and then tested by their entire staff and select loyal customers to ensure the highest level of quality. Cal and her husband, Jack Rosberg, have spent over 60 years combined taking care of customers. The most popular item from Hancock Gourmet Lobster is their award-winning Port Clyde Lobster Mac & Cheese. This fabulous dish has won two sofi™ Gold Awards at the International Hancock Gourmet Lobster Fancy Food Show and recently won the Lobster Mac & Cheese Throwdown with Bobby Flay. New York Times stated, “this everyday food assumes cashmere quality comfort.” As seen on Good Morning America, this remarkable dish has astounding richness and flavor. Shell pasta is glazed with a creamy mascarpone-cheddar sauce and sweet chunks of Maine lobster. The blend of pasta with delicious lobster is rich and satisfying without being too heavy. A delicious layer of toasted seasoned panko bread crumbs, herbed butter, lemon zest, and parmesan cheese adds a nice crunch to each bite. This “gourmet comfort food” compares to none other and will leave you wanting more.

Numerous celebrities purchase from Hancock Gourmet Lobster, including Oprah, who featured their Downeast Lobster Rolls in her O-list in the July 2008 issue of O Magazine. Their fresh lobster rolls are very popular as they are a Maine tradition and are available everywhere in the state. Hancock Gourmet Lobster makes a fresh lobster salad each morning that ships out overnight to all 50 states. The lobster meat salad is succulent and sweet with a tender resistance. The meaty and plump portions of lobster claw and knuckle meat are coated with spices and light mayonnaise. That salad, combined with the traditional New England split top rolls make a perfect lobster roll kit. All you have to do is butter, grill the rolls and stuff them full with lobster salad. The sensation is heavenly as the lobster meat held between buttered top rolls is scrumptious. The tender rolls are perfectly sized to hold a pocket of lobster salad and best served buttered and toasted. Now, you can enjoy these lobster rolls at home without having to travel to Maine. Serve them with potato chips, coleslaw and a cold beer, with Whoopie Pies for dessert and you the perfect Maine treat.

Hancock Gourmet Lobster If you need a quick and easy meal enough for a family or small party, be sure to order the Crab Quattro Formaggio Casserole. This casserole is made with a flawless combination of mouth-watering Maine crabmeat, cheese sauce, shell pasta, and crumb topping. The creamy cheese sauce is made of mascarpone, Swiss, cheddar and parmesan cheeses combined to form a rich and thick backdrop for the sweet and delicious Maine crabmeat. The casserole is then topped with crunchy, seasoned panko bread crumbs, herbed butter, lemon zest and parmesan cheese. With a generous portion of sweet crabmeat blended with the soft pasta and luscious cream sauce, this dish is a winner. This new 2.5 pound family-sized casserole is perfect for an evening meal or side dish. It was important to Cal to put her mark on the name of her company, so she named it after her surname as she felt it was a great, strong, New England name. She named it Hancock Gourmet Lobster Company to distinguish it from just a plain old lobster company. “We make great things out of lobster and they are very high quality, presented elegantly and different from most any other lobster company. I am extremely proud of our company and products and happy to have my name out there,” Cal says.

Hancock Gourmet Lobster The Pemaquid Point Lobster Pot Pie is another single sized luxury that can be prepared in the ease and comfort of your own home. These pies are made with succulent Maine lobster meat covered in a sherry-splashed cream sauce. The puff pastry is decorated with a lobster atop each pie, making the presentation all the more inviting. The fluffy pastry shell breaks apart to reveal the rich, tasty cream lobster roux with hearty portions of lobster. Fold the puff into the pot pie to dip the pastry into the sauce and enjoy every mouth watering bite. These award-winning pot pies are gorgeous, sumptuously delicious, and come prepared in reusable, oven-proof ramekins. We also recommend the ever popular Spruce Head Smoked Scallop Lobster Bisque, an award-winning smoked scallop lobster bisque made with cream, butter, and spices enveloping a blend of smoked scallops and Maine lobster meat. This rich and complex bisque permeates with the essence of smoked scallops and sizeable portion of Maine lobster.

Of course, Cal loves all of her products, but she is partial to the Lobster Mac & Cheese, Maine Crabcakes and Lobster rolls. Hancock Gourmet Lobster makes some products with Maine Crab and Maine Shrimp, which are small, but very sweet shrimp. They also offer Maine lobster and shrimp cakes which are quite delicious. Maine crab is unlike the kind of crab that many others offer which is generally from Indonesia as Maine crab is flakier, but very sweet. They make a 3oz crab cake and also a 1oz. crab cake covered in black and white sesame seeds that makes for a fabulous hors d’oeuvre. They even offer seasonal items such as their fabulous Lobster Gazpacho for the summer months and their Lobster Newburg, which became so popular they now offer it year round.

Hancock Gourmet Lobster Another award-winner is Cundy's Harbor Lobster Stew, made with heavy cream, butter, milk, subtle spices, and of course, lots of lobster. This smooth and lush stew with a savory aftertaste and immense lobster flavor is perfect with the plump lobster, which has a nice resistance. The stew is not thick like chowder but light like the consistency of brothy soup. This signature product is loaded with so much Maine lobster Hancock Gourmet Lobster meat that there is more than a whole lobster in every quart. If you adore oysters, you will love Orr's Island Oyster Stew for its rich oyster flavor and creamy consistency. Brimming with plump, sweet oysters, the delicious stew stimulates the senses and ignites the appetite. The distinct and briny flavor of the oysters blends perfectly with the milky broth. This is wonderful as a starter or an entrée when served with baguettes.

All products are made in their Topsham, Maine, facility, about fifteen minutes from Cal’s test kitchen and home in Cundy’s Harbor. They make everything by hand with all-natural ingredients and use only Maine lobster and local ingredients when possible. Cal says, “For instance we buy our dairy products from a local dairy that pledges not to use artificial growth hormone in their products.” Most Hancock Gourmet Lobster products are flash frozen and arrive frozen when shipped (overnight or two-day delivery). Customers then can put them in their freezers to prepare whenever they want or place them in the refrigerator to thaw and prepare within a day or two. Hancock Gourmet Lobster also offers some fresh items such as lobster rolls, lobster salad and gazpacho. These items are labeled as fresh and identified as needing to be refrigerated and consumed within a few days.

The difference between Maine lobster and that from elsewhere is the cold, clean waters of Maine provides an ideal habitat for lobster, thus providing lobster that is sweeter and more delicious. Maine has always been known for its lobster and its great eco-friendly management of this resource to ensure that there will be lobster for years to come as it has been “woven into the fabric of Maine’s culture as long as anyone can remember.” Looking down the road in the next five years, Cal sees her company continuing to grow by developing new products. She plans to open a retail store in Maine since many customers vacation there and want to stop by to purchase. As they offer many of their products for resorts and restaurants, they will also be growing that side of the business. Hancock Gourmet Lobster grows each year and hopes to continue doing that. Most of their products are sold through their catalog and website, but they also sell to several gourmet food catalog companies. They can be found at some specialty and gourmet stores nationwide. In closing Cal shares, “We love making all of our fabulous products and sending them across the country. We hear from customers everyday how much they love to eat and serve our products and we hope to continue making great goodies from Maine for everyone to try.”

www.hancockgourmetlobster.com

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