Mini spam musubi tutorial

April 23rd, 2008

I love spam musubi but I’m not a big fan of nori so I do my own spam musubi’s minus the nori on a small scale. They’re great for bentos but also good for appetizers at luaus as well. I don’t have fancy lighting or backgrounds so forgive my well used cutting board as the background in these pics!

What you’ll need to get started, Spam (I use light or less sodium because man can that stuff be salty!), cooked rice–the wetter the better since we’re not using nori, rice mold of your choice and spam slicer if you’ve got one.

Slice up your spam into equal width slices to make it easier to work with. If you’re going to use a knife, keep a cold, damp paper towel handy to wipe off the knife between cuts. Some residual spam can make it tear if it clumps up on the knife.

Take the bottom of your rice mold, the part that pops out, and use it as a “cookie cutter” with the spam. For small rice molds you can usually get 2 shapes per spam slice. The leftover scraps can be cut up and browned for use in quiche, omlettes or whatever you like.

Take your little spam shapes (cute huh?) and fry ‘em up in da skillet. You can use a little shoyu (soy sauce) or teriyaki sauce if you’d like some extra flavor.

Pop the bottom of the rice mold that you used as spam cutters back in the rice molds. Get just enough of the cooked rice to cover the bottom of the mold.

Put one fried spam piece on top of the rice.

Put enough rice on top of the spam to get it just above the top of the mold. Put the top on the mold and push the bottom up while holding the top to “smoosh” them together. Then refrigerate for a few minutes or you can even put ‘em in the freezer for a few minutes as long as you don’t forget ‘em!

Pull ‘em out of the fridge/freezer, remove the top and pop them out of the mold and voila! If you have problems with the rice not sticking you can either use a teriyaki glaze like Kikkoman’s and put a dab of it on either side of the spam and the rice will stick. Or if you want some extra color and don’t like nori, blanche some green onions until slightly wilted, dry them with paper towels and you can use them to tie around each piece of musubi.