BEST-EVER SPAM MUSUBI | Hawaiian family recipe for the iconic local-style snack!

hey there and welcome back to plays well with butter I'm Jess Larson and today I'm going to show you how to make one of my all-time favorite foods homemade spam Musubi now spam musubi is a snack I've been obsessed with my entire life I loved it as a kid and I love it even more as an adult and my mom makes the best spam musubi you'll find at this side of the Pacific to this day every trip to my folks house includes a fresh batch of Hawaiian spam musubi lovingly wrapped up to bring back home with us it's my favorite thing in the world if you've never made spam musubi before we'll show you exactly how it's done everything from preparing the rice properly to pan frying the spam in a delicious sticky sweet savory sauce and then wrapping them up in Nori seaweed every bite is pure Hawaii style comfort and they're so fun to make at home you're going to be obsessed [Music] if you're unfamiliar with it spam Musubi is an absolutely iconic snack in Hawaii it's really Hawaii's take on traditional Japanese rice balls which are called onigiri or omosubi their handheld snacks consisting of steamed rice they're wrapped in rice seaweed and they're stuffed with a variety of different fillings I've had everything from fish musubi to Fried Chicken musubi to Veggie musubi it's all delicious but since spam is a celebrated ingredient in local style Hawaii cooking it's fitting that Hawaii's take on Japanese musubi uses spam and since she's really the Queen of homemade spam musubi I figure there's no one better to help me show you how to make it today than my mom hi sweetie hi my this is my Mom Lori she was born and raised in Honolulu and this would you say how long have you been eating spam Musubi spam Musubi is a little bit more current than me so half my life after life but hers is really the best so I'm really excited that she's here to help me show you how to make Spam musubi today there are two secrets to really the perfect homemade spam musubi and the first one is you have to choose the right rice and you have to prepare it properly so Mom what kind of rice do you have here we have some cow rolls rice which is a medium grain rice it's an island favorite yeah and it has a really nice light but sticky texture when it's cooked up perfectly but if you can't find Cal Rose rice sushi rice works great it's just shorter green so will you walk us through how you prepare cow roast rice in a rice pot okay for one can of spam you're going to want two cups of Cal Rose rice you're gonna scoop the rice into the pot you're going to rinse off the rice to get rid of the dust and then you're going to use your finger this is called the knuckle method of measuring out your water you're going to put water in your rice pot and you're going to rest your finger on the surface of the rice and let the water come up to the first digit of your knuckle and that's how much water should be in your pot to cook good rice now the second secret to the perfect homemade spam boost would be is you have to nail the ratio of spam and rice too much rice overpowers the spam too much spam is too salty it has to be perfect so we slice one can of spam into how many pieces seven pieces which is a little bit harder than slicing into eight pieces but you can do it you want to show them how okay so you're going to work the spam out of the can your fork oh yeah you're gonna measure about half without cutting it and then you're going to just offset that cut just a little and then cut that piece off and then go towards the other side you can get the perfect thickness for one slice of spam then it's easy to measure out the next piece into thirds [Music] foreign [Music] perfect this will make the best ratio of spam to Rice yes so our spam is sliced perfect thickness and the last thing we're going to do before we pan fry it is prepare a simple spam musubi sauce so this is like a Teriyaki style sauce wouldn't you say yes you want to start with 1 3 cup of dark brown sugar you can use light but I prefer dark it just has like a more caramely flavor it's really great three tablespoons of soy sauce I'll show you if you're on the islands yeah yeah two tablespoons of mirin which is a Japanese rice wine sweet and then we'll watch one teaspoon of sesame oil mix that up and give it a good stir and get that brown sugar a little bit dissolved and there you have it should we pan fry some spam yes let's do that okay we're going to put the pan over medium Heat Spritz it with a little bit of oil so the spam doesn't stick and then lay our spam slices in the pan some parts of the frying pan may get hotter than others and your spam will get done a little faster that's that golden brown surface that we're looking for and the ones that are cooked already you can flip over so I'm going to put some of our sauce on each slice you might want to turn the heat down a little bit to maybe medium low one thing we don't want to do at this time is to burn the sauce and we'll turn each piece of spam over again and sauce up this side [Music] and you want to just turn it and keep marinating each side with that really nice sauce and the spam is ready for its rice blanket our rice is perfectly fluffy our spam mom expertly has cooked for us and now we can start assembling and wrapping the Musubi so Mom what do you have here we have a cutting board wrapped in plastic wrap so things don't stick we have a Spam musubi mold these are especially made so to make two spam musubis at once so if you want to get a big piece of Sushi Nori and we're going to use this to wrap up our spam recipe as you can see one side is shiny and one side is dull we're going to use the dough side up it looks like a square but it's not so you want to make sure that you have the long side on the Left Right of you and then you want to be able to put your mold right in the center we're going to start adding a little bit of rice to the mold you'll see that Mom used the paddle to kind of scrape the rice off of the top rather than digging towards the bottom and that keeps it really nice and fluffy and it doesn't make it super dense and then we want to make sure that you fill the mold really really delicately we don't want to pack it down because again that will take away the Rice's fluffy texture so Mom is scooping a little bit at a time and she's kind of using the side of the paddle to press it down rather than really like pressing it down you don't want to come up way to the top because you want to leave some room for the spam now you want to use your fruity cocky this is a Nori and sesame seed sprinkle it adds a little bit more flavor to your rice when I was a kid mom called them sprinkles I thought all sprinkles were made out of seaweed put a layer of spam get two nice sized pieces about the same width and lay it on the top now you're going to lay the top of your mold on your spam and press down while bringing the sides of the mold up then you want to take your fork and gently peel away the mold top leaving the spam on the rice we're going to wet the edge of the Nori so that it will stick together to the other side once we fold it we're going to take the dry side and put it over the top Stick it to the spam and we're going to roll it like you would a sushi roll you went a little tight and just lay it down on that wet side and then roll it back over and there you have it a double spam will be we're going to use a wet knife just slightly damp I'm going to cut it right down the middle separate your two motor bees and then you can also cut it once again want to clean your knife really well get all that Rice off she's doing it fancy for you it's kind of like when your mom cuts the sandwich into triangles instead of squares right I never get buzzed again beautiful you can have two nice little spam one should be halves beautiful well I can't resist I'm gonna go ahead and take a bite an island favorite in Wisconsin or Minnesota but what I really love about it is the texture on the spam it's nice and crisp and the sweet Savory flavor of your Musubi sauce really helps balance out the spam plus the rice when you cook it perfectly there's like nothing better than white rice so this is honestly like my perfect bite [Music] these are so cute it's seriously the perfect Musubi you're gonna find outside of Hawaii so be sure to head over to place well with butter for the full recipe give it a try soon and be sure to share all this delicious Aloha with those you love Yeah that's what Hawaii food is all about in the first place and be sure to like And subscribe for more unfussy recipes that pack a big punch of flavor we'll see you next time [Music] thank you thanks Mom you're welcome don't ask me to do this again you did great

Channel: Plays Well With Butter

Views: 544,318

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Id: Ori0cYKdB-s

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 23 2023