Recipe for Homemade Spiced Ham a.k.a. SPAM

Originally published December 4, 2012.

SPAM.

You may remember a post I wrote back in June that got me started on my quest for a recipe for SPAM or spiced ham. Very few exist online. Then again, you really can’t beat $1.60 a can for the “real” thing. 🙂 Since then, I’ve made three attempts and on the third try, I pretty much hit the jackpot.

You either love it or hate it. You see, I grew up on the stuff. I had it alongside eggs, in kimbap, in spaghetti sauce (Ragu or Prego depending on the month), or just pan-fried with some rice and kimchi. When fried, the crisped edges were the best part. THE BEST. SPAM is ubiquitous in Korea, served in various comfort dishes such as ramen, budae jigae, kimchi bokum, bokum bap, as a pizza topping…you get the picture. SPAM is one of my guilty pleasures.

I based my recipe on Cupcake Project’s recipe which includes pork shoulder, ham, garlic, and Morton’s Tender Quick (curing salt). The latter which I wanted to avoid. The curing salt lends itself to the salty sweet cured meat flavor and helps to keep the meat pink. My ham loafs oxidized pretty quickly so turned a light brown when open to the air – I’m okay with that if you are. My development of the recipe was not scientific since a lot of my ingredient choices were sort of random, that is, I went with my gut.

My first attempt pretty much followed the recipe except that I substituted Hawaiian Red Lava salt (expensive, but tasty) in place of Morton’s Tender Quick. It was a random choice, but I googled “curing salt” and this was the first salt that popped up. The texture of the loaf was between that of pâté terrine and meatloaf, a little crumbly. And it was terribly bland. Half of it ended up in the trash.

The second attempt included a binder to “smooth” out the texture. I also added some sugar (2 teaspoons) to give the some balance to the flavor and opted to use unrefined sea salt and increased the amount by a half a tablespoon. BLECH. The salt was way too salty. It all ended up in the trash.

I took another look at the list of ingredients on a can of SPAM. It listed a “modified potato starch”, the binder. And I literally added potato starch to this batch. Why not?

My third attempt was a charm. The texture was close to the “real” thing and the flavors were pret-ty close to being spot on. I was so excited. So excited. I lopped off a few slices, fried it up in a pan, and HAD to have it with rice. No cabbage kimchi, but fortunately had some kaenip kimchi (whew). I felt like I was easing into a deep cushiony armchair after taking a bite of the crispy morsel. My version ends up being almost 4 times as expensive as the real thing, but completely worth it.

Happy Holidays spiced ham lovers and lovers-to-be…consider this my gift to you! 😉