American · Hawaiian · snack

Spam Musubi

Spam Musubi reads salinity 6.5, umami 6.4 and marine & briny 5.3 on Palate's 0–10 flavor X-ray — a American · Hawaiian snack, about 1 hr 17 min. Measured from the recipe itself: ingredients and technique.

The flavor X-ray — six axes, 0–10

The measured notes (of 18)

Salinity 6.5 · Umami 6.4 · Marine & Briny 5.3 · Sourness 4.2 · Richness 4.0 · Sweetness 3.7 · Funk & Ferment 3.5 · Nutty 2.4 · Earthy 1.3 · Bitterness 0.6 · Floral 0.5

What's in it (11)

Time & effort: about 1 hr 17 min (1 hr 7 min active) · effort: involved

Nutrition (per 100 g, engine-estimated): 135.5 kcal, 2.8 g protein, 1.2 g fat, 27.3 g carbs

How it's cooked (8 steps)

  1. Spam musubi is local food, not Native Hawaiian food, and the distinction matters. It belongs to the plantation and post-war layer of Hawaii cooking — the plate lunch, saimin, loco moco, malasadas — that came out of Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Portuguese and Korean labourers eating together in the cane and pineapple fields, and out of the enormous quantities of tinned meat the US military left behind after the war. Hawaii still eats more Spam per head than anywhere else in the United States and it is eaten without irony. Simeon writes about this directly: the joke is other people's, not Hawaii's.
  2. It is a musubi in the Japanese sense — a hand-pressed rice block — with a slice of glazed Spam on top and a belt of nori. Every convenience store on the islands sells them warm by the register.
  3. Cook the rice: bring it to a boil with the water, cover, drop to the lowest heat and steam 18 minutes, then rest 10 minutes off the heat without lifting the lid.
  4. Warm the rice vinegar with 1 tablespoon of the sugar until it dissolves, fold it through the hot rice with a cutting motion, and let it cool to just-warm, about 15 minutes. Warm rice presses; cold rice crumbles.
  5. Fry the Spam slices in the oil in a hot pan, 3 minutes a side, until the edges are crisp and deeply browned. Spam is already cooked and already salty, so what you are after is caramelisation, not doneness.
  6. Pour off the fat, add the shoyu, mirin and remaining 3 tablespoons sugar to the pan and let it bubble around the slices 3 minutes, turning them, until the glaze is thick and lacquers each piece.
  7. Lay a half-sheet of nori shiny side down on a board. Set the empty Spam tin, or a musubi mould, on the lower third and pack it two-thirds full with rice, pressing firmly and evenly. Lay a glazed Spam slice on top, sprinkle furikake, lift the mould away.
  8. Fold the nori up and over the block, wetting the far end with a fingertip to seal it. Scatter the sesame seeds. Let the finished musubi sit 10 minutes so the nori softens against the rice and stops cracking when you bite it. Eat with your hands, at room temperature.

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Every number above is Palate's engine-measured estimate, computed from this recipe's ingredients and techniques — not human-tasted ratings or reviews.