Spam Musubi is a Hawaiian Delicacy

I am feeling nostalgic tonight. I grew up in Hawaii and tonight I was watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus and they started in on the Spam Spam Spam Spam song. Well, Spam is part of Hawaii’s lifestyle much more pervasively than Scrapple is here Mid-Atlantic.

Spam is everywhere in Hawaii.

In fact, musubi, a brick of sticky white rice and a bit of fish or meat wrapped in nori, or seaweed, is made with Spam in Hawaii.

This concoction is completely normal and is called “Spam musubi.” You can get Spam musubi at the counter of 7-11as a quick snack. Some places offer both Spam musubi as well as hot dog musubi, which was a block of sticky rice, a length of hotdog cut lengthwise, and the nori seaweed wrapper.

Divine!

Spam musubi from Wikipedia
Spam musubi is a very popular snack or luncheon food in Hawaii made in the tradition of Japanese onigiri or omusubi. A slice of Spam is placed onto a block of rice and a piece of nori (dried seaweed) wrapped around the Spam-rice combination to hold it together. There is a common misconception that Spam musubi is a variation of sushi. In reality, it differs from sushi in that its rice lacks the vinegar required to classify it as such.

Spam musubi is appreciated for its taste and portability. A single piece, wrapped in cellophane, can be purchased at small deli-type convenience stores (including 7-Eleven stores) all over the Islands, ranging in price between one and two dollars. Spam musubi rice molds are available at many kitchen stores in Hawaii. These molds are a few inches deep with a width and breadth that matches a slice of Spam. Thrifty people can also cut both ends of a small Spam can, to the same effect.

Lovely spam, wonderful spam.
Lovely spam, wonderful spam.
Spam, spam, spam, spam.
Lovely spam, lovely spam.
Lovely spam, lovely spam.
Lovely spam!
Spam, spam, spam, spam.

Musubi (Onigiri) from Wikipedia
Onigiri (??????????, ?????) also known as Omusubi (??????????) is a Japanese (short grain) rice ball snack most commonly formed into triangle or oval shapes and wrapped in seaweed (nori). Traditionally, the onigiri is filled with pickled ume fruit (umeboshi), salted salmon (sake), katsuobushi or any other salty or sour ingredient. Pouring vinegar on the cooked rice for onigiri transforms it into the basis of sushi, a different kind of food. In practice, however, either pickled filling or vinegar is used for preservation of the rice. Since the onigiri is one of the most famed and popular snacks in Japan, most convenience stores in Japan stock onigiri in many popular flavors. Specialized shops, called Onigiri-ya, offer handmade rice balls for take out.

History

Writings dating back as far as the 17th century tell us that many samurai stored rice balls wrapped in bamboo leaves as a quick lunchtime meal at war, but the origins of onigiri are much earlier.[citation needed] Before the use of chopsticks became widespread in the Nara period, rice was often rolled into a small ball so that it could be easily picked up.[citation needed] In the Heian period, rice was also made into small rectangular shapes so that they could be piled onto a plate and easily eaten. It was called tonjiki (??????????, ??).[citation needed]

From the Kamakura period to the early Edo period, onigiri was used as a quick meal.[citation needed] This made sense as cooks simply had to think about making enough onigiri and did not have to concern themselves with serving. These onigiri were simply a ball of rice flavored with salt. Nori did not become widely available until the Genroku era at mid-Edo period when farming of nori and making them into a sheet became widespread.[citation needed]

It was believed that onigiri could not be produced with a machine as the human rolling technique was considered too difficult to replicate. In the 1980s, a machine that made triangular onigiri was built.[citation needed] This was initially met with skepticism because rather than having the filling traditionally rolled inside, the flavoring was simply put into a hole in onigiri and this shortcut was hidden by the nori. Since the onigiri made by this machine came with nori already applied to the rice ball, over a period of time the nori became unpleasantly moist and sticky, clinging to the rice. A packaging improvement allowed the nori to be stored separately from the rice. At the time of consumption, the diner could open the packet of nori and wrap the onigiri. The machines’ limitation that an ingredient was filled into a hole instead of rolled together with the rice actually made new flavors of onigiri easier to produce as this cooking process did not require changes from ingredient to ingredient.