SALON

Wednesday, Apr 6, 2011 6:01 PM UTC

Spam four-way: Broiled, sauteed, poached and braised

Is the world's most loved/mocked luncheon meat as tasty as I remember? I run it through the gantlet to find out

By

Topics: Sacrificial Lam, Food,

Spam four-way: Broiled, sauteed, poached and braised

Is there a food more widely mocked than Spam? Its name was long rumored to stand for Stuff Posing as Meat. It’s synonymous with Internet junk. (No, kids, they didn’t name the canned pig after banking offers from dispossessed Nigerian millionaires. It was the other way around.) And well before there were ironic visits to the Spam Museum, comedy crossed into Spamland with Monty Python’s famous Viking Spam sketch:

But for all the mockery, I’d always assumed that we only kid because we love. I mean, everyone grew up on Spam, right?

Right?

Turns out, no. In fact, in the office yesterday we asked if anyone had actually never tried Spam … and the uninitiated doubled the deflowered. Where’s the love for tinned luncheon meat? For the meat-ish loaf that dare not speak its name?

I suppose it doesn’t help when Spam’s own website reads no more deliciously than this: “What is Spam? A family of meat products that are very versatile and tasty, which can be served in a variety of ways, such as sandwich meats, salad ingredients or to make a meaty mac & cheese food dish.”

Still, maybe it’s because I’m Asian, or because I’m the child of immigrants, but I always assumed eating Spam was like the taking of mother’s milk. The salty, porky lump is totemic, iconic. You can’t pry it out of the hands of a Hawaiian. It comes standard between soft white bread and creamy scrambled eggs in Hong Kong breakfast diners. It functioned, one memorable vacation, as the meat we had to bring with us, because my father, in love with the bounty of America, insisted that we have meat at every meal.

And I have to say, through all that, I’d always loved it. I loved its soft, creamy flavor. Its comforting squishiness. But I also haven’t had it in forever. How would it stack up now? Inspired by Mark Bittman’s column the other day about reacquainting yourself with white fish, “Broiled, Sautéed, Roasted, Poached,” I decided to give a can of Spam my own variety of treatments.

The Uncanning

The first whiff was … not as appealing as I remember. It’s the smell of Vienna sausages, of certain blander dog foods. I tap tap tapped the bottom, until it slid out, riding a wave of its jelly, making that telltale sucking sound. You really have to admire a food that gets 78 percent of its calories from fat.

Bonus first course: Sashimi

Well, if I got my hands on a beautiful fillet of fish, the first thing I’d do is slice off a little bit and try it raw, just to see it in its most unadulterated form. (I guess “alive” would count as “most unadulterated,” but I’m not going there for you.) So in keeping with the spirit of things, I took a thin slice of Spam sashimi. (It’s already technically cooked, of course.) It cuts like cream cheese, and peeling it off my knife, it’s kind of … beautiful. You can see the patterns of the fat and streaks as they were turned and folded, this meat mass that was once like dough.

It is salty. Very salty. But meaty, too. Ham-like, for sure — but if ham had its own built-in mayonnaise. I don’t think Spam sashimi is really something you need to try, particularly.

Sautéed

I seared a slice in oil, and watched it throw off grease like a 2-year-old doffs his clothes. It’s an unnerving sight for the over-30 me, and when I took it out of the pan, I drained the slice on a paper towel. Am I missing the point? Maybe! But am I ready to die? No, I am a chicken.

The edges really brown up nicely, crisping up in that ideal, hear-it-more-than-feel-it way, and the inside keeps a juicy tenderness. But then that melting quality gives way to firmer, more meaty texture. I’m reminded of the taste of scrambled eggs, even though it doesn’t actually taste like scrambled eggs. Must be some kind of pavlovian thing as I channel the spirit of breakfast sandwiches from decades ago. As I chew, it starts to taste a little metallic, but in a minerally way, in a not altogether bad way. But gah, the salt!

Broiled

Sizzling and popping in the oven, I take out my third slice of Spam to see that it’s rendered off a bunch of its fat; it’s visibly shrunken. Tiny bubbles formed on the surface, translucent and crisp, and the color deepened to a brick-ish red. Flipping it over, I see the side that sat on the pan; by the color, it’s nearly burnt (oops), but it’s amazingly crisp, almost like a chip, in the way that bacon gets amazingly crisp.

I would have feared that overcooking the Spam would dry it out, but 1) “fear” is overstating it, since the pool of rendered fat in the broiling pan is now kept away from my body and 2) science has ensured that it is impossible to dry out Spam. Sure, it’s a little chewy, but in a satisfying, jerky-like way. (In Spam, Hormel has made the ur-meat.) Once I detect the vaguely smoky flavor from the intense browning, I realize what my reaction is: This is what people love in bacon. Yes, it’s aggressively salty, but with less mass, it feels more appropriate. And it’s not like there are juices that keep the salt coming in waves.

Poached

Yes, I poached my Spam. If that sounds pretentious, I can tell you I boiled it. Either way, I’m sorry, but this is delicious. This is a flavor of my childhood, and I can’t ever forget it. I grew up on big bowls of chicken broth full of macaroni elbows, diced boiled Spam and canned corn. (Try it. Really.)

But aside from nostalgia, boiling actually accomplishes a few things. One, most important, it washes much of the saltiness away (mostly if you cut the Spam up into small bits; if you’re going for big chunks and slices, it’s still salty as hell). The heat and moisture keep the Spam soft and supple, with just enough to chew on. That creamy, fatty flavor comes to the front, round and rich. Remember when I said earlier that Spam tastes like ham that comes with its own mayonnaise? This makes Spam taste like mayonnaise that comes with its own ham.

Braised in white wine

The beauty of braising is that the long, slow cooking is the cook’s alchemy. It can take tough meat and turn it tender. It takes different ingredients, extracts their flavors into the sauce, marries them and then changes them, rounding them off, concentrating them, turning them into an intense form of something just a little bit other. So I seared off a slice of Spam and braised it down in white wine, applying the most magical technique I can muster to the science of Hormel. I’m pretty sure God never intended for this to happen.

At certain points, I opened the lid to find the Spam bloating up like a giant bubble. At other points it would deflate. The wine thickened with juices pulled out from the fatty Spam, and wrapped its tartness around the meat. I was sure something was going on in that pot. Maybe not something good, but something.

But then I took a bite. And after I got past the intense flavor of reduced wine and got to the potted essence of the Spam itself, I was both stunned and comforted by what I found. Nothing. Nothing changed. After all that, Spam remains Spam.

 

Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 58 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Francis Lam eats the outlandish foods you want to try but probably shouldn't. An occasional series, per doctor's orders and decency's sake.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
149 points150 points | comment
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
130 points131 points | 91 comments
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
129 points130 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
116 points117 points | 33 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
74 points75 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations