A Little Aloha with Spam Musubi

Aloha folks!! Sorry for the long post delay but I was busy stuffing my face and watching Hula in a recent trip to Hawaii. The ladies in my family like heading to the Big Island during Merrie Monarch to watch the amazeballs dancers compete in the Merrie Monarch Festival and this year we drug the boys along too. Like I said before, I basically spent the entire time drooling over the gorgeous dancing men (and women, shooot they were gorgeous) and eating everything Hawaiian food-related in sight.

somanymusclesahhhhhhh

pigging out at an all-you-can-eat Hawaiian buffet with Carly (left, yeah that's not me, close though) and Jason

So, with Hawaiian food on the mind, I bring you a tutorial on the greatest snack food of all time, aka Spam Musubi. For those of you who have been to Hawaii you'll know that these beauties are EVERYWHERE. Like pick one up in the gas station to munch on status. But they are so ridiculously easy to make that we often times make a batch to just have in the fridge to snack on throughout the week.

Of course the glorious thing about this recipe is of course the main ingredient: SPAM. Here's where I become a bit of a hypocrite. For the most part we try really hard to eat organic, non-GMO, healthy yadda yadda but Spam really is my downfall. Spam sandwiches, spam and eggs, spam just by itself, you name it, I'll probably eat it. Spam musubi is of course no exception. 

For starters, if you're thinking about making enough for a bit of a stock in the fridge, cook about 3 cups of short-grain "sticky" white rice (this yields about 12-15 musubis). Do this about 40 mins before you think you're going to want to start making the musubi so your rice will have time to cool a bit. Then, start prepping your nori (seaweed) which will be wrapped around everything to hold in all the musubi loveliness. You'll want the regular, square nori you can find in most supermarkets in the Asian isle. Once you have several slices out (you'll need one packet and have extra to make the 12-15), cut them in half and set them aside. 

cutting in half like a pro

Now it's time to slice and cook up the Spam. For the 12-15 musubis we used two cans of Spam but this depends on how thick you want to the slices to be.

you can cut it thinner if you want, but really, who doesn't want more spam??

Then cook it up. Now here's where you know Spam really is sketchy because you really don't have to cook it if you don't want to but browned Spam has a lovely salty flavor that is unparalleled in musubi.

cooked on the left, cooking on the right. mmmmmm golden Spam

Once your Spam is done cooking go ahead and set it aside and get ready for the fun, really super re-purposing part. In Hawaii they sell fancy little plastic musubi makers that you can buy at any major food store. Orrrrr you could just rinse out the Spam can and use that instead. I'll show you how to use both below:

fancy on the left, old-school on the right 

First, I'll show you how to rock it the old-school way with the Spam can (or really Jason will since his beautiful hands were doing the fancy work in the pictures). Take your rice and start pressing it into the Spam can. Put enough pressure where your're confident that the rice will stick together, and fill to the top:

It's the world's greatest hand model!

Once filled, turn that can upside down and "fwack" it out. That's really the best word I know how to describe shaking something until food comes out. I looked it up in Urban Dictionary and apparently is means to be slapped with a fish (wtf?) but really fwacking is the best way to describe getting rice out of a spam can:

Maybe a video would have been best to really appreciate "fwacking"

TADA!

Now that's a big block of rice so with a sharp knife, cut the rice into sections. Again the thickness is all based on personal preference but we cut one Spam can block of rice into three slices:

Jason loves showing off his sushi knife any chance he gets really

Now if you're lucky enough to have one of the musubi contraptions I'll show you how to use that. Pull the top off and stuff enough rice into it for one musubi. Remember with this, you'll be squishing it down with the topper so put in enough rice where you think it'll squish to give you enough for one musubi. Do this all over one piece of nori and then squish the rice down and lift the whole box up and you're set!

so fancy!

Now to make the magic happen. Choose your topping of choice:

Katsu sauce or Soy sauce? I personally prefer it traditional and stick with the soy sauce but Jason is a katsu sauce man. If you've never had katsu sauce, think like a BBQ sauce almost. Kind of sweet. I always stock up on Katsu sauce in Hawaii so I'm not sure if you can buy it in regular mainland supermarkets but if you're hankering for it, drop by an L & L and grab some to go!

Now that the hardest decision has been made for the day, pull out your halved piece of nori , place the slice of rice in the middle and top with your favorite topping:

traditional for me with soy sauce

or how Jason prefers with Katsu sauce

You're almost there!! Place a piece of cook spam on top like so:

And now it's time to seal that baby up! I usually keep a small bowl of water next to me while doing this next part because water will help seal the nori together to hold everything up. Wrap the nori on either side of your spam/rice block and tap a little bit of water along the edge to seal:

PAU!!! You can immediately saran-wrap them and store them in the fridge to enjoy over and over again or you can be like Jason and immediately eat them all. Either way, enjoy that aloha goodness!

that is one happy camper