May 2008_We Make Spam Musubis

Musubis — we make those ourselves when we know we will have a beach day. They often sell these for $2.00 a piece at yard sales even. Problem with making them is they are best that day — hard to really refrigerate rice and have it taste good.

Nothing complex about them, and when you have the little plastic assembly device they are very easy to form, cut and handle. We do ours with rice, spam, eggs, seaweed and Furikake [say frutikaki] (which unfortunately many places these days omit and without that seasoning sprinkled on it is a totally different experience)..

The first two pictures show you what you should end up with. These are actually from some we made at an earlier session.






And for this photo series, this was the setting -- in our farm kitchen, Ric on the left doing most of the process and Jerry on the right to help and give his input...




Cut fairly then and then pan fry your spam like these below..



Fry up some eggs, they don’t need to be too buttery or oily and well done, flat not fluffed up, you’d certainly not want scrambled.



A nice big hot bowl of white rice, not too watery, not too hot if possible, definitely not cold.



This mold and press device is what helps make the procedure go smoothly.
They make this small size and also one much wider.
Wal-Mart, Longs, most of the grocery stores should have this device in stock.



Don’t forget the Furikake -- these are deluxe seasonings that really make this treat stand out.
We show three but there are dozens of choices with the many flavors and brands on the market.
You can find these at Wal-Mart, K-Mart, even the grocery stores as these are very much part of the local food.



The seaweed wrap will also be essential to bring out the full flavor.
Available all over even so much in demand that Costco’s sells it in BIG packages.



We begin with the seaweed and the mold...



Traditionally you would put a bottom blanket of a tea leaf into a nice container to prepare for when you have these ready to transport. The tea leaf is often planted near the entrances to gates, the surrounding peremeters of homes, next to your entrance doors of any home or business, and put onto the dashboard before you take a trip. They are supposed to keep evil away and protect you from things you can’t see but they repel.



We will always trim the seaweed to better fit the mold we are working with. This makes it much easier to wrap and the taste will be better balanced for what is inside the wrapper.


After you have the wrap sorted, you put rice into the form about a finger high it looks, and you press the plunger down.
A scoop, like an ice cream scoop, might make it easier to judge how much (since you’ll be doing this several dozen times) and keeps your fingers from getting so much rice which can make it harder to do the other parts of the processing.






Now add a layer (a piece) of spam.



Press a generous portion of egg on top, but you don’t want too much or it will overwhelm the other flavors.



Spread out the egg as evenly as you can over the whole layer.



There you have it -- one of the most important parts is adding the seasonings on top of the egg!



Add rice on top next.



Here’s about how much rice we used for our set this time.



Press the last layer of rice down, and you can see it is rather a firm press with both thumbs.



Lift up and you are done with this step part of building the musubi.




Once you are done -- wrap it up to keep it moist and anything else (like flies) out.



The finished product. Most people could probably eat two or three. But they are sort of like “Chinese Food” you can eat a couple and then still want more an hour or two later.



The finished product, looking forward so you can see the layers.