Imagine that you entered your recipe into a local blue-ribbon contest and won. Then imagine your recipe wins the grand-prize national award out of 800 entries! Well, for Caroline Burgess of New Mexico this scenario became reality. Her SPAM® Thai-Style Meatballs is the grand-prize winning recipe in this year’s Great American SPAM® Championship. Way to go Caroline!
Caroline’s meatballs combine SPAM® Less Sodium, coconut-curry rice, and fresh cilantro rolled into a rice ball then breaded in shredded coconut and panko breadcrumbs. Once they are deep-fried, the finished meatballs have a nice crunchy exterior and a delicious filled interior. Accompanied by an Asian sweet chili sauce, her recipe is very creative and different from anything I have ever tasted.
Why am I so interested in SPAM? Well, the answer is quite simple. Growing up, our family ate SPAM. It is the key ingredient in making Spam-musabi, a popular sushi style snack food in Hawaii and among Asian Americans. The most common type of Spam-musabi is made by forming a block of rice and placing a piece of grilled Spam on top then wrapped with dried seaweed (nori). Many Sundays I will eat Spam-musabi at church as it is a very common lunch snack among our Asian-American fellowship.
About 5 weeks ago my husband and I went on a quick trip to Waikiki for his work and to celebrate our 13th Anniversary. While he was in meetings, I took it upon myself to go on a self-guided food crawl. Using Yelp and asking locals for recommendations, I walked around for hours looking for tasty bites and memorable dishes. I made several stops searching for the best Spam-musabi, just for the fun of it. My favorite one was the breakfast musabi with a slice of Spam, bacon, and egg sitting on top of sesame seed studded rice ball and nori wrapped around it. I loved it.
Did you know Waikiki is also known for SPAM JAM? Our grand prize winner Caroline will be attending SPAM JAM on April 27th in Waikiki on an all-expense paid trip. What is SPAM JAM? Tens of thousands of people attend this popular annual festival for its great food and entertainment. Hawaii is the perfect setting for a SPAM festival because Hawaiians take their SPAM very seriously. So seriously that more SPAM is consumed per person in Hawaii than in any other state in the US. Nearly 7 million cans of SPAM are eaten in Hawaii every year!
When my family and I stayed in Honolulu three years ago, we just happened to be in Waikiki during this event. It is a great family-friendly event along Kalakaua Avenue which is closed off during the festival. Street venders set up tents selling SPAM themed items as well as other crafts as local musicians play music. Local restaurants serve signature dishes and the proceeds benefit a local charity. If you are attending the event, you will have an opportunity to try Caroline’s award-winning SPAM® Thai-Style Meatballs.
This year I will be attending the SPAM JAM (as a guest of SPAM) in Waikiki April 27th eating all the tastiest bites I can find and sharing them with you via Twitter #SPAMJAM, Instagram, Facebook, and of course on SSL blogging about the festival. I will also be going from food booth to food booth taking pictures with my iPhone. If you see me, don’t be shy… say hi! And if you live in Washington, I’ll be judging the Washington SPAM Blue-Ribbon contest at this year’s Puyallup fair. I’m not kidding when I say I have a special place for SPAM in my heart.
If you’re looking for SPAM recipe inspiration for next year’s contest or for your personal enjoyment, you’ll find many recipes (including Spam-musabi) here.
Just for fun, here’s my take on Caroline’s Thai Meatball recipe. Enjoy!
- 4 quarter-inch slices fresh pineapple, cut into 24 one-inch pieces
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar
- 12 butter lettuce leaves, washed and dry
- 4 full sheets roasted nori cut into 4 equal envelope sized pieces
- ½ cup sprouts
- ½ cup carrots, julienne
- ½ red jalapeno pepper, thinly sliced
- ½ cup cilantro stems with leaves
- 18 SPAM Thai Inspired Meatballs -> recipe here.
- ¼ cup sweet chili sauce
- Lightly sprinkle the brown sugar on both sides with brown sugar. Grill the pineapple for one minute on each side on high heat using a stove-top grill pan. Set aside.
- To make the lettuce wrap, overlap two pieces of the butter lettuce to form a circle.
- Lay a piece of nori down the center.
- Layer the sprouts, pineapple, carrots, jalapeno, and cilantro down the center of the nori.
- Top each wrap with 3 meatballs, Top each meatball with a little sweet chili sauce.
- Serve the wrap open faced.
Hi David,
Thanks for stopping by and leaving such a thoughtful and kind comment. Made my morning. Alice
I just wanted to say that I like your site. Not only for the recipes, the writing and the photo’s quality
but you do one other thing that I really appreciate.
Your site keeps the recipe and the article on one, easy and convenient page. This way I do one save,
it is easy-peasy and I don’t have to go searching, nor download 2 pages-or more.
Plus my memory has less annoying advertisements clogging it up.
The other day I unsubscribed from a large site as I had to spend way too much time, jumping from one site to another and then to the original source to get the recipe.
I love cooking ( and eating! ) maybe a bit too much. So a big Thanks for all the work you put into this site.
I’m not from Hawaii, yet I enjoy Spam. As a young child I always thought that Spam was a delicacy. We didn’t have it often, but I always looked forward to it. I enjoy it today. I haven’t ever seen many recipes for cooking with Spam. Until I got older and was on my own did I find out that there was other ways to cook Spam other than pan fried. I will be looking for recipes that I might enjoy. Thank you very much for your blog, if possible just ignore people that want to be negative. If they don’t like the subject should just scroll right on and not comment unless they have something positive to add. Just a thought?
To Chrystina…. I’m actually amazed that you’d be so rude to someone you claim to admire over a recipe that feeds four with one measly can of SPAM. No where in her blog does she force you to cook, eat or even read this meal. And, I for one have my grocery list made just for all the fond memories not only or Hawaiian friends, but mostly of SPAM. If you don’t like it don’t cook it. But save your bile for your stomach please. And your backward-non apology most certainly did not round out the discussion.
This post is really appealing and makes my mouth already watering! Thank you for this great post. I’ve never a wrap with this kind of creation and I can’t wait to try it…I’m always looking for new wrap creations and I’m really happy that I found another one now. If you have another wrap recipe or any other recipe you want to try but it is not in your native language make sure that it is translated by a professional translator to get an accurate translation.
i LOVE seaweed and have never thought of adding it to lettuce wraps. I think the savory taste + texture would be a great addition. Such an interesting recipe although I must admit I’m still a bit wary of trying spam (even though I hear its delicious).
Hi Alice,
Thanks so much for your reply and another side of the story. I do appreciate your honesty around the fact that most of us are trying to do our best in regards to “eating cleanly” but there will always be small percentages of the time where we eat otherwise–myself included. I guess I didn’t think about the fact that as a blogger, it was important to you to be truthful/keep it real about that, but I do see the value in being forthcoming and appreciate the other perspective.
That being said, I was raised in Puerto Rico when I was a little girl and Spam was a big part of the island diet. I do a lot of work on food justice. As such, I am not a fan of Spam, or other processed foods like it, because above and beyond the ill health affects they have in the lives of folks that consume them, they also represent a highly political component.
I get frustrated by the fact that a diet high in Spam in places like Puerto Rico and Hawaii, as well as certain areas in the US is more about affordability. Poor people are the ones that consume this product the most since access to, e.g., grass-fed, organic meats, or even sub-par meat, is highly limited. Furthermore, a frequent line of discourse in food justice or in commentaries about folks that eat these products is this idea of choice and the market. On the one hand, people can say that folks are making choices to eat Spam, or McDonald’s and thus their ill health is an individual responsibility. Conversely, there are those like, e.g., Michael Pollan, and Alice Waters that engage in projects around shaping choices as a means to change the food system. The one thing they have in common is they put the onus of the situation on individuals and the market. It does not call into question, nor place responsibility, on the powerful structures that influence and simultaneously limit food choices. It does not hold accountable the large corporate interests that spend billions on influencing policy, so that their products, e.g., Spam, will not be limited (never mind the fact that these companies produce products that they know are absolutely bad for people–it’s on the people to not choose to consume our product, and it is not on us to not make such an insidious product, and meanwhile we will advertise and entice consumers to eat our stuff as well).
That was why I felt disappointed by your post. You are advertising and promoting Spam. When I read your post, it was disheartening for me personally (though I know a million others don’t have the same reaction), because it felt to me like you were participating in the advertisement of the product itself. It wasn’t until my comment that you added the additional information about your decision to promote a product like Spam–and I appreciate that info. And, while I get your reasoning for choosing to promote it, I need to add that I feel like it’s one thing to keep it real about the fact that we may all engage in eating that isn’t best for us at one point or another–even awesome bloggers such as yourself, but it’s still an entirely different thing to actually promote the product as an advertiser without adding those caveats within the post itself.
Ok, I’ll stop now because I don’t want this to seem like I’m being “holier than thou.” Alice, I really appreciate the opportunity to express my opinion and my reasoning behind that opinion on this particular post. And, I certainly don’t want to make it seem like my opinion should dictate what you should write and how you should blog . As the commenter below said, have a great time and keep doing and being you. As a follower and fan of your blog, I just felt it was important to express this opinion since it was my personal reaction to what I saw. I also hope my comment helps round out the post in some way, and gets others thinking about this issue of food justice and how it can come up in even something as seemingly mild as a blog post about Spam and the Spam festival in Hawaii.
Thats a super creative recipe – thanks for the post! We are from Hawaii – grew up on the stuff and while we don’t eat it much anymore, we make exceptions here and there because it’s a part of our childhood. Everything in moderation. Anyhow, seeing such a creative way to prepare it is inspiring. Have a great time and keep doing what you do so well, Alice – just being you!
I’m so coming over to your house right now, Alice. Do you have any left??
Hi Christyna-
I’m sorry I disappointed you with this post. Sometimes blogging is difficult because what you see is only a glimpse of what we eat and how we live. One thing I’ve always tried to maintain is honesty and integrity on Savory Sweet Life. I’ve always tried to present a what you see is what you get online and offline -I don’t try to over exaggerate or sugar-coat anything. When it comes to cooking for my family on a daily basis, you would likely see us eating pretty healthy and clean 90% of the time and from whole food sources. This is because I generally do not like processed foods. And if I am to be completely honest with you, there are those times within that other 10% that I indulge myself with foods for various reasons. For example I have a hard time resisting a grilled ball park hotdog from a street cart vender outside Safeco field when attending a Seattle Mariners game. My primary reasons for my involvement with attending SPAM JAM and judging a State Fair recipe contest is my deep fascination with cooking contests/cook-offs from an American cultural stand-point (I’ve always been this way since I was a child), food pop-culture (street food, food trucks, festivals, etc), and a cultural/childhood connection I have with SPAM. My brother-in-law and many congregants from my church are from Hawaii and when someone brings a plate of Spam-musabi rolls to church or a gathering, we do appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into preparing this dish.
I think it would be more disingenuous of me to present myself as a 100% clean eater and eat contrary to how I present myself online. Instead, I share with people what I’m preparing from my kitchen and what is happening in my life. And every once in awhile an opportunity will present itself that intrigues me enough to partner with a company because I have a genuine interest in it for various reasons as I explained above.
This is probably not the response you were hoping for but it is an honest response which is what I feel I owe you. Thank you for taking the time to stop by and share your thoughts. I really do appreciate the time you took to share them.
Alice
Spam is a highly processed “food-like substance” (as Michael Pollan would say) that reflects the major issues with our food system. Hawaii has some of the highest cases of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes in the country–and it is precisely because healthy food is so expensive (exploitation of land and labor under colonialism) and items like Spam are so cheap (reflecting labor inequalities, environmental degradation, and the issue of animal welfare in large feedlots), that this is the case. I must say, given your past posts on changing your diet for the good of your health, I’m really disappointed to see you promoting Spam. Overall, I am a big fan of your blog, your cookbook, and much of the work that you do–but much like reading that Obama signed the Monsanto Protection Act today, I was saddened to find a Spam promoting post by you in my inbox today 🙁