Spam musubi

The sweet and salty spam was so delicious with the soft, sticky rice and the crispy seaweed. I know my wrapping skills aren’t nearly as good as Akina’s, but I can see why this flavor combination is so popular!

Top tips from me:
1) Most grocery stores will carry the ingredients you need, but if it’s a smaller store, head to a store like Hana or Rice Market to find quality sushi rice, furikake and sushi nori. While you’re there, maybe see if you can find the mold (or on Amazon).
2) Akina sent photos of her using low sodium Spam so I followed in her footsteps! Feel free to use the regular kind, though.
3) The Spam can works with a bit of saran wrap to help pull the rice out, but I imagine you can get a tighter sushi wrap and way more rice in there if you use a proper mold.
4) I recently ran out of sushi rice and couldn’t get more in time, so I used a bunch of  online advice to make my plain white rice more sticky. I added extra tablespoons of water to steam it longer, letting it sit on the stove on low for another 20 minutes, then added in about a tbsp of rice vinegar.
5) I definitely did not make enough rice though, which is why my musubi looks way thinner than the gorgeous photos on Abunai’s social media. Make sure you make enough rice. In fact, make too much rice. You can never have enough.
6) Make sure you pan fry the Spam before adding the sauce! Get it nice and crispy, but not dry.
7) Give the sauce a good stir before adding it to the pan because the sugar didn’t fully dissolve for me. Also make sure you get that garlic and ginger onto the Spam.
8) You’ll like find sushi nori sheets that are too long, so just cut them in half. Nice and simple.
9) Wrap your musubi as tightly as possible, but don’t get discouraged by it not looking perfect. It’ll still taste amazing (I promise).
10) Don’t forget the furikake on top. I did before I took photos, but added it shortly after, I swear.

Time:
This took me about an hour start to finish with my photo and video pausing. When making this for yourself for lunch, depending on your sushi-wrapping skills, it will likely take 30 minutes. This could easily be a meal for four, if each has four musubi.

Ingredients
1 can reduced sodium Spam — 4 cups sushi rice or white rice (see tip for how to make sticky) — 1 cup soy sauce — 1 cup granulated sugar — 1 tsp chili paste — 1 tsp oyster sauce — 1 tbsp sesame oil — 1 tbsp mirin, — 1 tbsp minced ginger — 1 tbsp minced garlic — 4 full-sized sushi nori sheets (8 when cut in half) — furikake 

Instructions:

1. Take Spam out of can and cut into 8 even slices.

2. Meanwhile, cook your sushi rice. Once cooled down to room temperature, mold rice into musubi mold or spam can wrapped in saran wrap. Make sure the rice mold is several inches thick. 

3. Combine soy sauce, sugar, chili paste, oyster sauce, sesame oil, mirin, minced garlic and ginger in a bowl to create Abunai sauce. Set aside to add to Spam slices later.

4. Pan fry Spam slices in skillet with a little oil, until golden brown on both side.

5. Once both sides are seared, add a splash of Abunai sauce (about 1 tbsp) on one side then flip to sear with the sauce for a few minutes. Repeat on the other side. 6. Remove spam from the pan and assemble your sushi-making station. Cut sushi nori sheets into the length of the spam slices.

7. Place spam on sushi nori sheet about 2 inches up from the bottom. Place rice mold on top.

8. Wrap the nori sheet around spam and rice mold as tightly as you can.

9. Cut Musubi in half. Sprinkle furikake on top and splash with extra sauce. Enjoy!