Dec 12: Mainland Spam Musubi

Weather forecast to day is for snow and cold temperatures (mid-20's) for the weekend lasting throughout the rest of next week. For some reason, spam popped into my mind. In particular, spam musubi. Spam musubi is a Hawaiian snack that has it's origin in Japanese and the popularity of spam on the Islands.

Spam musubi is just spam and rice wrapped in seaweed.

A typical recipe is found on allrecipes: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Spam-Musubi/Detail.aspx

For me spam is a once every two years type food. :-)

My version is a West Coast/Mainland version of Spam musubi... I'm using brown rice instead of white rice.

Spam Musubi (Mainland Style)
1 Can of Spam sliced 1/4 slices
1 T Oyster Sauce
1 T Soy Sauce
1/2 t Sugar
Brown Rice (2 Cups cooked in 3 Cups broth)

Sliced Spam


Marinade half the Spam while the other half was fried. I was worried that the marinade would over salt the already salty spam.


Pan Fry Spam


Four slices of marinaded Spam (on the left) and plain pan-fried Spam (on the right).


There are special musubi presses that can be purchased, but since this is just a trial I made my own with the Spam can, cardboard and foil. I lined the can with cling wrap to simplify the rice/spam extraction. [Note: A finished Spam Musubi in the background.]


1/4 cup of rice, is pressed in as the first layer.


A slice of Spam is added, topped with another 1/4 C o f rice and pressed again.


The naked musubi... The brown rice is not holding together as short grain white rice.
Nori is wrapped around the rice packet... Sealed with a little water on the edge.


After resting about 5 minutes... the packets are cut in half.
Some of the musubi contained a thin egg omelet... gotta have eggs with Spam. :-)


Surprisingly, the marinade added a lot more flavor to the Spam without creating a salt lick. It helps that the rice is only lightly seasoned. However, the rice was too "crumbly" to make a proper musubi, but did hit the spot. After making about 4 bundles, I gave up and packed it into the fridge.