Posted on 04/17/2021 12:56:49 PM PDT by Mariner
In 1937, in Austin, Minnesota, Hormel Foods combined pork, water, salt, sugar and sodium nitrate, looking for a way to profit off the then-undesirable pork shoulder. The result was a nonperishable slab of pink meat, conveniently packaged in 12-ounce cans. As the story goes, Jay Hormel crossed the words "spice" and "ham" to name the invention "Spam."
But if the pork product was invented in Minnesota, how did it come to be so uniquely celebrated in Hawaii? When I lived on the island of Oahu for two months this year, Spam was everywhere — in cafes that specialize in Spam musubi, in the refined dishes of fine-dining restaurants and the McDonald’s breakfast menu. In a phone call with TODAY Food, food biographer Carolyn Wyman recalled that while her book signings usually occur without much fanfare, she was met with a 45-minute line at the Honolulu signing of “SPAM: A Biography.” According to the SPAM website, Hawaii residents consume 7 million pounds of Spam each year.
At the same time, residents of the mainland United States tend to view the canned meat with derision. Food historian Rachel Laudan has noticed that the subject of Spam resurfaces in mainstream media at least once a year — and when it does, “People say all of the same things,” she told TODAY. “About how they wouldn't touch it, how it's awful …
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Scallions, celery, Serrano pepper, Spam, soy and brown rice.
Superb.
Don't trust somebody who won't eat Spam.
And it keeps GOOD for 30 years.
Mmmm.. spam sushi
Not a huge fan of the stuff, but from time to time, is pretty good fried or in a fried rice dish.
Shelf life of 30 years and an Ultra high salt and fat content, what could go wrong ?
It will last longer than someone that consumes it on regular basis.
When I was younger, I seem to recall that Spam was reasonably priced if not cheap.
Now it is higher priced than ham. What gives? Is Hawaii driving up the price?
It was a great camping item and went good with a couple eggs.
Baked with brown sugar - yum.
I live on the Big Island. Been here 21+ years.
Spam is like rice here, it is everywhere.
I prep for SHTF stuff as we are the target of all sorts of natural disasters and man made ones eg hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, Nuke attacks, dock strikers et al.
I keep about 4 months supply(120 or so cans) of Spam on hand, in addition to freezers and pastures full of beef, hams, chicken, and veggies.
Spam is good it won’t rot and you can barter with it if the stores run out. Here the toilet paper, rice, Spam and diapers are the first to disappear from the shelves,
when disasters strike. Much of the island lives off catchment so bottled water is #5 to fly off the shelves.
Aloha and don’t vacation here we don’t really like visitors, they drive badly.
I used to like Spam sometimes but found out it is owned by Hormel, a Chinese company. Hormel has now bought Planters peanuts and has owned Skippy for a long time.
There are other Hormel products that are good, like the roasted turkey, but I’m trying to stay away from Chinese products. I think Goya makes a spam-like product but I have not tried it yet.
That is how my mother usually served spam many years ago. We kids hated the stuff as inferior to genuine, thick sliced ham steak.
Words to live by, FRiend.
I used to know a guy that loved it as the meat with his breakfast. I tried it once and was pretty meh about it.
So you do not see Spam being popular in the ME were they do not eat pork, in Greenland were it is cold or anyplace outside the US were there are no US military bases.
It is not very complicated.
I liked it as a kid. But now I can no longer take nitrates so no deal.
What does it say about native Hawaiians that they treat this as a delicacy? (And i like Spam but not as a delicacy!)
Then you must love the traditions of the WW II Russian Army, which basically survived on the stuff.
Corned beef? That and cabbage is great once a year but that’s it.
Paella was always leftovers on the Spanish plain.
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