Hormel SPAM in a Japanese Can

Purchased from: Grocery Outlet (North Tacoma/6th Ave.)
Price: 75 cents

There is nothing quite as American as good old Shoulder Pork and hAM, or as some might call it SPiced hAM. This Fourth of July you should be enjoying something All American instead of fireworks (Chinese), beer (German), and hamburgers (German). I mean we fought two wars against the Germans, and the Chinese totally supplied our enemies during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Better yet, enjoy a shipment of good old American SPAM redirected from Japan to America to support our Independence day celebration!

Being an a True American who loves all things American I had to sample this can of patriotic SPAM redirected from Japan. It’s only the patriotic thing to do! Being a product intended for Japan I had some misgivings about what  be contained inside the curiously un-American sized can. Perhaps Hormel reformulated the American icon into some sort of tiny and efficient Japanese meat monster with potted meat tentacles with beef jerky antenna.

Instead I was greeted with a half-sized lump of SPAM. No need for swift American justice from the barrel of my forty-five.

SPAMEDAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I prepared the Un-American sized hunk of SPAM on a 100% American cast iron pan, lightly browning the slices it like I would any standard hunk of American spam. Not miss out on the whole Japanese experience I cut the slices into strips, pan fried some snow peas with white onions, and steamed up some white rice. The smell of the peas, onions, and SPAM cooking was just fantastic. If I had the presence of mind I’d have fried up an egg to make the perfect breakfast.

The Japanese SPAM tasted less salty than conventional SPAM although this may have been entirely in my head since there’s no variation that I know of between conventionally packaged SPAM and Japanese SPAM. Other than the salt-level the SPAM was just like how I remembered my mom would prepare SPAM when I was a kid. Good uniform texture, and it paired quite nicely with straight up white rice. No soy sauce required.

All and all it was a pretty normal dish for me, and any SPAM lover would be right at home chowing down on Japanese labeled SPAM. I honestly like the smaller amount of SPAM in the can since Marisa is in the Anti-SPAM camp, which means I have less left overs to deal with (not that leftover SPAM is a bad thing). I would highly recommend that any SPAM lover check out Japanese SPAM if they have it available to them even if it is just for the novelty of eating SPAM from a Japanese labeled can.

Tags: Foreign, Meat, Pork

This entry was posted on Monday, July 4th, 2011 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.