Spam Musubi

*If you want, you can also use teriyaki sauce in place of soy and sugar and chicken in place of spam, but I recommend following the recipe the first time around.

1. Place the SPAM on a cutting board and slice 8 slices length-wise.

2. Mix sugar and soy sauce together in a deep dish and place the sliced meat in to marinate for a few minutes (I usually leave it for a half hour or more, but that’s just me).

3. Heat (low-heat) a non-stick frying pan and cook the spam on one side, spooning in the marinade goodness all over the top of each slice. Turn over and repeat. The outside of the spam should be a little darker (more cooked) here and there but still very moist. Let it caramelize with the marinade, but do not burn.

4. Take a musubi mold (or a cover of a butter dish or a small rectangular 2″W/5″L/2″Deep tupperware container) and place plastic wrap inside. Spoon the rice in the ‘mold’ and mold it so that it is rectangular and ‘boxy’. Be sure to press down so that it sticks. You can add a bit of sushi vinegar if you want, too – it will help the rice stick together even more. Remove rice box and continue with the rest of the rice.

5. Slice the nori sheet (seaweed sheet) to fit the length of the rice box. Place the rice ‘boxes’ in the middle of each strip of nori. *If you prefer less nori, slice nori strips 2″ thick and wrap in the middle around the rice and spam).

6. Place a spam slice on every rice box (rectangle on rectangle) and take one end of the nori and pass over the rice and spam and tuck underneath the rice (left side of nori passed over the spam going right and tuck underneath the right side of the rice) and fold over the other side, overlapping nori on nori and seal with a dab of water, like an envelope.

*Rice to Spam ratio is 3:1 (three parts rice to one part spam)