Spam musubi

Glazed fried luncheon meat pressed onto rice in the tin it came out of.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains pork.

Ingredients

• 1 tin luncheon meat, in 8 slices
• 600 g cooked Japanese rice, warm
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons mirin
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 4 sheets nori, halved
• 1 tablespoon oil

Method

1. THE EMPTY TIN IS THE MOULD, washed and with both ends removed. It is exactly the width of the slices, which is the point -- a musubi press does the same job and nothing else gives the proportions.
2. FRY THE MEAT BEFORE GLAZING IT. Dry pan or barely oiled, 2 to 3 minutes a side, until the edges are genuinely browned and crisp. Glazed from raw it steams in its own sauce and stays pale and soft.
3. Slice about 8 mm. Thinner and it disappears into the rice; thicker and the musubi will not hold together.
4. Soy, mirin and sugar in the pan once the slices are browned. Turn them in it 1 minute until sticky and dark, then lift out.
5. It burns quickly from here; the sugar goes from glaze to char in under a minute.
6. RICE WARM, NOT HOT AND NOT COLD, as for the onigiri on this site. Cold rice will not bind.
7. Lay a half sheet of nori shiny side down, the tin standing on it, and press rice into the tin to about 2 cm with a wet spoon or a block of the tin's own metal.
8. PRESS FIRMLY. A loose musubi falls apart in the hand, and this one has no fillings holding it.
9. A glazed slice on top of the rice, then lift the tin away.
10. Bring the nori up both sides and seal the overlap with a wet finger. Eat within a few hours and never refrigerate -- cold rice goes hard.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Japan · All recipes