Musubi

Sausis 11, 2022 m Mėsa, Užkandžiai,
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When I published a blog post with dishes and recipes from Sheldon Simeon’s new book, Cook Real Hawai’i, a few of my friends immediately pointed out to me that there were no dishes with spam.

That’s true: I made sardine pupu and macaroni salad, mochi chicken and shoyu steak, and baked butter mochi cake. But there was no spam. No musubi. Recipes were in Sheldon’s book, of course. I just did not pick them for my blog post.

I’ve never been to Hawai’i, and I know so little of Hawaiian culture, or cuisine. How could I know about the importance of spam?

After the blog comments, I opened the book again, and read what Sheldon had to say about spam: why it is so loved in Hawaii, why it is the item to buy when there is any type of civil emergency, also how to cook it, and how to eat it. There is also a super nice video on Youtube, Why We Eat, in which Sheldon tells spam stories, and also shows how to make spam musubi.

As Sheldon says in his video, spam gets a bit of a bad rep these days. Spam recipes don’t show up on the pages of glossy cooking magazines, or on fancy food shows. It is meat in a can, so it is hard to expect anything fancy. But the ingredient list did not seem too scary to me, not any scarier than that of any deli meat that many of us buy and eat without thinking twice.

So I went to the store, and bought a couple cans of spam, and made this super quick, super easy, and honestly quite tasty recipe. Spam musubi. My kids loved it too. I have one more unopened can, so I am sure I will make this again soon.

Thanks to my Hawaii-savvy friends, for educating me about Hawaiian spam culture!

Ausra

Spam Musubi

Recipe sources:

Sheldon Simeon | Cook Real Hawaii

I am food blog

Cooked sushi rice

Sugar

Salt

Rice vinegar

Spam

Sherry

Soy sauce

Toasted seaweed

Furikake

Season freshly cooked rice with sugar, salt and rice vinegar. Set aside to cool.

Remove spam from the can. Slice into 6-8 slices, cook on the pan until lightly browned on both sides; transfer to a plate.

Deglaze the pan by adding some sherry, soy sauce and a teaspoon of sugar. Place cooked spam slices back into the pan with sherry-soy sauce glaze, flip spam slices, to coat with glaze. Remove the pan from the heat.

Line empty spam can with plastic wrap. Pack a layer of cooled rice, press it well with fingers or tablespoon. Remove packed rice from the can, lay it on a dry surface, sprinkle with furikake. Place a cooked spam slice on top of rice, wrap the stack into a sheet of toasted seaweed. Serve right away.