Recipe: Spam Musubi, a Hawaiian Variation of Sushi that is Crazy Tasty!

I first tried sushi earlier this year but it was Wegman's California sushi rolls, which are not really considered real sushi per se but close enough I say. It came with the usual 3 sauces (teriyaki, wasabi and ginger) and was made from artificial crabmeat, otherwise known as crab flavored Pollock fish, and avocado, all wrapped up with rice. It tasted reasonably good and I might try it again.

I tried real sushi last month from a Japanese restaurant and I had 3 different flavors using raw fish including, spicy tuna, eel and Boston, which is supposedly made with cooked shrimp but I couldn't really tell. The sauces were a little better than Wegman's. The sushi tasted okay but I don't think I like it was wrong fish.

At the time I first tried the "real" sushi, I had a young 25 year old nurse who helped me decide what to order. Afterwards, I mentioned to her that they should make some time for sushi with cooked chicken or meat instead of raw fish because not everyone likes or trusts raw fish. I know there are types of sushi with cooked fish and some with vegetables but I had ever seen any with chicken. Of course, the nurse, who disagreed with me on most things, also disagreed with me about making sushi with chicken or meat.

I never thought to look it up on Google. That is, until I came across this assignment for Spam Musubi on Associated Content, I thought to myself, "Hmm, I need to check this out!" Low and behold, I find out that Spam Musubi is a variation of sushi made with spam. It's too bad I got rid of the know-it-all nurse because now I can't yell out, "Hah, I told you so!"

So, here we are. I finally found my type of sushi, only I would have never thought to use Spam. Now that I know other people have been eating Spam Musubi for years, I no longer feel self-conscious or weird about my idea to use other kinds of meat with sushi. But, of course, there is a downside because now I know that my idea was not original!

Background

Contrary to popular belief, musubi is not really sushi. Onigiri or musubi is made with plain rice but sushi is made with rice tea with vinegar, sugar and salt. Onigiri was designed to be portable and as a means to store and preserve it in easy to stack shapes; sushi was designed to preserve fish.

The original musubi was first eaten during Japan's Kamakura period (1185-1333). It was originally called Onigiri, also known as omusubi or rice ball. It was made with white rice into triangul or oval shapes and often wrapped in nori (seaweed). They were filled with pickled ume (umeboshi), salted salmon, katsuobushi, kombu, tarako, or any other salty or sour ingredient as preservatives. Today, onigiri is served in many convenience stores with various fillings and flavors.

Spam musubi has been a popular, portable snack in Hawaii for a while now. It is sold individually wrapped in many Hawaiian convenience stores, such as 7-Eleven, and cost under $2. Other varieties contain shrimp, chicken, or pork instead of Spam.

Spam musubi is basically a slice of grilled Spam placed on top of a block of rice and wrapped around with a piece of seaweed. A plastic mold is often used to press everything into shape but is not required.

After learning about Spam Musubi, I just had to look around for recipes and design my own -- I consider myself a sort of MacGyver for food, leaving out the duct tape. The biggest thing I wanted to change was the nori or seaweed because I never really cared for the taste -- instead, I chose to use fresh spinach. If anyone has a problem with my substitution of seaweed with spinach, tough, it's my sushi and I can make it how I want to! Just kidding, if you want to still use seaweed, go ahead because it won't make much difference in the recipe.

For those that do not know what Spam is, it is a canned pre-cooked meat product that was first sold in 1937 and is currently produced by the Hormel Foods Corporation. It is basically your typical luncheon meat and you probably really do not want to know what's in it -- consider it part of Spam's mystique.

Spam Varieties

Spam originally came in only one flavor but today there are 8 different varieties including:

SPAM Classic
SPAM Lite (33% less calories, 50% less fat and 25% Less Sodium)
SPAM Less Sodium (25% Less Sodium)
SPAM Oven Roasted Turkey (100% white, lean turkey meat)
SPAM Hickory Smoked
SPAM with Bacon
SPAM with cheese
SPAM Hot & Spicy (with Tabasco sauce)

SPAM Spread and SPAM Hot Dogs have also been added into the SPAM product line.

Most Spam musubi recipes use SPAM Classic but its sodium content comes in at a whopping 790 mg per serving. The current Spam slogan that can be seen on its packaging is "Crazy Tasty" but I prefer to call it "Crazy Salty." I prefer the Less Sodium version with 580 mg sodium per serving, which is still high but a lot better than the Classic. I would go with the SPAM Lite (33% less calories, 50% less fat and 25% Less Sodium) but I think it's also 50% less taste in my opinion.

Some recipes call for soy sauce or teriyaki sauce, which can both be excessively salty. If the Classic spam is used, these are very, very excessive amounts of sodium! So, along with the Less Sodium Spam, I also use a low sodium teriyaki sauce.

I know that many Spam musubi recipes use soy sauce with the addition of garlic, ginger, brown sugar and other spices but, to save time, I used teriyaki sauce, which is basically the flavor you would receive from all of the ingredients in the soy sauce combinations. If you are a traditionalist, you can do it the hard way. Now onto my recipe for Spam musubi.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 (12 oz) can SPAM Less Sodium
1/3 cup of Kikkoman Less Sodium Teriyaki Marinade & Sauce
3 cups white sushi rice, warm
1 pat of butter (for a nice buttery flavor)
1 package of big leaf spinach or package of nori

Directions

Open the SPAM can top and dump the SPAM onto a plate. Take a can opener and remove the bottom of the can.

Slice SPAM width-wise (with SPAM on its side) into 1/4-inch slices (about 16).

Pour the teriyaki sauce into a shallow dish and marinade the SPAM slices in it for 30 minutes.

Remove and dry the SPAM slices from the marinade.

Heat the butter in a skillet and brown the SPAM slices.

Moisten hands and inside of the SPAM can with a little water. Scoop a handful of warm rice and push it into the bottom of the can against a clean work surface. Firmly press the rice to pack it together. Add more rice until it is about 1 inch thick.

Place a SPAM slice on to the rice inside the can. Add another 1 inch layer of rice on top of it and firmly press down until it is packed down into a block.

Gently lift the can off of the rice and SPAM block.

Cut spinach into 16 strips, approximately 2 inches wide and 8 inches long. (Some people use thinner strips and some use wide strips that encompass most of the contents like a burrito.)

Gently wrap the rice and SPAM block with a spinach strip around the middle.

Moisten one end of the spinach strip and press the ends together.

Serve the SPAM musubi With the remaining teriyaki sauce as a dip.

Tips

Store the SPAM musubi by wrapping them individually in plastic wrap and refrigerate them until ready to eat. Heat acked them in a microwave for about a minute before eating.

The rice can be seasoned with furikake, which is dried seaweed with seasonings.

For an extra kick, put a little wasabi into the rice before forming it.

Related Article: Loco Moco Recipe: A Hearty and Simple Dish from Hawaii

Sources: Spam.com, Wikipedia