Spam Musubi

I don’t know for certain where to start with SPAM musubi, except to say it was Kels who planted the idea in my head.

Our resident smarty-pants-slash-funny-girl-slash-hip-Gen-Z coworker, Kels, put Onigiri on my radar last spring, right after we were all stuck home due to COVID. She brought it up in a lunchtime Zoom chat, excitedly waving her chicken-katsu onigiri into frame, and I was instantly charmed. Onigiri, a seaweed-wrapped Japanese rice ball, then unearthed memories of seeing SPAM musubi at the SPAM museum on our family roadtrip in 2019, and that memory then made me run over to reach deep to the back of our coffee cabinet to pull out my vintage “Hawaii” souvenir coffee mug.

I found that mug a few years ago, unearthed on an easy weekday thrifting dig with Muzzy. We were at a second-hand shop near Muzzy and Dad’s house, and it called to me from a dark shelf with its cheerful peachy hue. It features swaying palm trees in relief, with large, black block letters spelling “ALOHA HAWAI’I” splashed across one side. The idea of Hawai’i always charmed me, a tropical foreign place with a solid 1940s vibe. Whether my visions of it were true to life or not, I snatched up that mug and drove it 500 miles from the Ozarks back to frigid Wisconsin. The thin ceramic of it worried me that it would easily crack with any heat, though, so over time it was slowly pushed to the back of the mug collection, soon to be forgotten.

Back to Kels’ onigiri, though. I was thoroughly enchanted and curious, but with a few cans of the Hawaiian Portuguese SPAM still kicking around our pantry from our roadtrip, I decided maybe SPAM musubi would be a better starter instead. Online searches took me down the rabbit hole of Hawai’ian specialties, eventually leading me to the website Onolicious Hawai’i. From there I learned not only how to make SPAM musubi, but about how entwined it is with Hawai’ian culture.

SPAM musubi is a ridiculously simple creation, composed of only four ingredients, basic staples of every Hawaiian kitchen. When combined, the textures and flavors cannot be beat – sweet with an umami punch, crispy fried spam with soft rice. What is there not to love.

In Hawai’i, musubis are found at every grocery, corner store, and convenience store on the Islands. They are sold in school cafeterias, from food trucks, and at bake sales. Picnic? Sleepover? Potluck? Someone is bound to bring them. They are consumed as a snack or a meal, even for breakfast.

So I mean, hey. Sure, on the Mainland it’s laughed at, but I was down to try some SPAM musubi. So there I was last spring giving it a try for lunch, following in Kels’ footsteps. And guess what: it was a hit. Huge. The kids devoured it and so did we. Now I make it often enough, mostly for lunchtime. One SPAM musubi makes a good snack, two make a very filling lunch or dinner. And here I am, to share all the loveliness with all y’all. Step by step instructions to follow.

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Step 1: I didn’t take any pictures because I didn’t even think of it because I am not a food blogger. But! Make your rice! I just use Nishiki rice from the regular grocery store. Sushi usually means doctoring up that rice with some sugar and rice vinegar, but they don’t usually do that for musubi.

Step 2: Prep your sauce! I’ve read that a traditional sauce is a mix of shoyu (soy sauce or coconut aminos works), brown sugar, and a touch of sesame oil. I just kinda eyeball it for our tastes, maybe a 2:1 shoyu/sugar, then a splash of sesame oil, boom done. I suggest you start out more 1:1 with that ratio, and play around to your tastes. Or! If you don’t feel like mixing something up and have some bottled/leftover teriyaki sauce on hand (like I did this very day), that also works quite well.

Step 3: slice your SPAM, warm up that pan about Medium heat, and add those bad boys to the pan.

Step 4: Brown slices nicely on both sides, then add your sauce. Let it mingle with the SPAM and bubble up to a nice, thick sauce. Swirl those SPAM babies around in the sauce so it soaks into all the little cracks and spaces.

Step 5: gather your ingredients. You’ll need (1) your cooked rice, (2) your sticky sauce-y SPAM slices, (3) furikake, and (4) nori. You can find nori at most grocery stores these days, but if you can head to an Asian grocery. You can pick up cheap furikake while you’re there as well (you can also order the super-overpriced furikake from Amazon, or get a sad version from Trader Joe’s). I say hit that Asian market if you can, and as long as you’re there get yourself some kewpie, good kimchi, kit-kats, and shin black ramen.

You will also need a tool to form the musubi. I bought ours off Amazon, they seem to have quite a few to choose from (just search “musubi press”). The SPAM museum sells their own version (also sell a SPAM slicer, which I feel like I kinda need at this point). Or, if you don’t want to go through the bother of ordering a press, you have two more options: (1) You could hand-press the rice like one would for nigiri. Or (2) take your empty SPAM can, line it with Saran wrap, and use it as your mold (just pull out of the can by tugging on the ends of Saran wrap).

Step 5: lay some Saran wrap on the counter, place your musubi press on the Saran wrap, and add rice.

**HERE IS WHERE WE HAVE ANOTHER SIDE NOTE. There are two ways to form musubi! You can put a big blob o’ rice down (fill your press 3/4 full to right to the top, your preference), smoosh, then add your sprankles/toppings and wrap with nori. That’s the musubi you see the most and I’d gather is the way the majority of SPAM musubi is formed.

Or: I made the “SPAM in the middle” style here. For this one, fill your mold/press with a thinner layer, maybe 1/3 of the way full. Then squish that rice.

Step 6: liberally sprankle on that furikake goodness.

Step 7: Add a slice of SPAM, then more furikake sprankles.

Step 8: fill ‘er up with a heaping scoop of rice, then smoosh again.

Step 9: TA DAAAAA, almost there. It is fun to stop at this stage for a sec though and just admire.

Step 10: cut nori to fit – here’s where you have a few options again. You can cut a narrow slice to just wrap down the center, or you can fully wrap (we are full-wrappers in this household, give us all the nori).

Start by placing the nori on top of the rice.

Step 11: Carefully rotate your musubi 360, until you have covered it in nori. You will have a small bit of overlap; you can “glue” the nori shut using a few grains of the cooked rice.

Step 11: grab and go, baby. Musubi is great for taking along to eat pretty much anywhere. Take along for a picnic, potluck, hike, beach day, LAKE DAY. Sky’s the limit.

If you have too much musubi or make extra to eat later: wrap each musubi individually, PRE-NORI WRAPPING, in the Saran wrap under your press. Then pop them in the microwave to warm up whenever you’re ready, and wrap in nori.

I love to make SPAM musubi, and it’s really easy to play around with and add to it. Add a layer of egg, spring onion, sauteed eggplant, bacon, avocado, julienned veg, whatever sounds good to you.

Oh! And hot tip: I will make a very thin wasabi sauce by mixing a small amount of wasabi powder with water. Perfect for dipping your musubi into for a good kick in the nose.

That’s it, friend! I hope you enjoy as much as we do. Musubi 4Eva.

As a postscript: heeeeeey. Wanna hear more about that mug? I decided it deserved some attention recently, so I use it occasionally. Because it’s old, mostly it’s a vessel for snacks or yogurt parfaits, admittedly. But anyway: now that my Muzzy is gone, I hold it in a place of reverence. It was the last time Muzz and I had a day alone together to bum around, free of husbands and kids. We drank copious amounts of coffee that morning at the house, thrifted all morning to our hearts’ delight, then ended our day with more coffee and catching up at our favorite little coffee shop.

Losing my Muzzy has shifted my viewpoint a bit, too. There are a number of things I’d thought about as an abstract thing I’d do “after we retire” or “when the kids move out” or, you know, the Classic: “some day”. But truly: why are we waiting? For when we are old and creaky and can’t enjoy all the fun things at these places? Also what guarantee is there that we’ll even still be around to see those times? Reality is: there isn’t. So some things I want to do or see, I’m no longer putting these things on the back-burner, people judging us for being “wasteful” or “fiscally irresponsible” be damned. And traveling to visit Hawai’i, that is one of those things.

So I started reading up on Hawai’i in earnest, learning about all about the ugly bits along with the beautiful bits. I’m tracking flight prices and poring over Island research. We’re gonna get there, and I’m hoping to get there one day SOON, albeit in a way that affects the locals the least (not an easy thing, admittedly).

Okay enough preaching! Go enjoy life and the people you love in it and most importantly, go find some cool shit from your local thrift shop. The end.