First a word about Spam. The tins don’t have the nutritional values on them. I think I know why. A 2oz slice (roughly a sixth of the can) has not only the faintest trace of a vitamin, but 15g of fat in it (6g saturated) and 767mg of sodium! That’s a quarter of your daily allowance of fat and third of your daily allowance of salt in one slice! Some protein, and practically no carbs on the other hand (clutching at straws)…it’s hardly a fair swap before you get too excited…
I saw this before I even opened the can but pressed on regardless (something about angels and fools treading) and the first impact you get is from the smell, which is, to be frank, enough to send you reeling. Cold sweaty cat food.
The dog, however, moved faster than has ever been known and was drawn to the tin as if by some kind of olfactory tractor beam and she begged and quivered and gibbered around me. Make of that what you will…
Then the glistening lurid pinkness of it as it emerges (easier said than done it turns out) from the tin all congealed and claggy…oof! Still, I’m intrepid (read a fool) if nothing else, so I slice it into six slices and begin the trial. ‘Fully cooked. Ready to eat hot or cold’ it proudly boasts on the can so I bite into the cold candy pink slab…what can I say?!? Hell…it’s salty!! @*%k me!! Hmmm this is a problem. I love salt but even I think this is like a mouthful of the Dead Sea so I put a couple of slices in a dish of cold water in an attempt to draw some of the salt out.
With the remaining four slices I tried the following ‘fritter’ action…don’t judge me…
- The straight forward fry. Literally just fried it till it crisped up on both sides.
- A basic batter like for fish and chips (I used self raising flour as that’s what I had to hand, so just flour and water – no seasoning as that can retard the crisping process, I’m told – beaten to a smooth thin batter).
- Then the same as above but with a sort of Welsh Rarebit twist! I added wholegrain mustard, Worcester sauce and paprika.
- The above but with strong cheddar added (only cheese I had in). This seems like lunacy as the saltiness will be increased but I am clearly heady with mild hysteria and just throwing caution and sense to the wind. You can tell I was getting desperate to find something to counter act the Spam…render it edible…
Well, I think you can already imagine what it all tasted like. Yup…salt. Porky salt at times and then a surprise hint of mustard or cheese for a second then back to salt. The silver lining was I downed a couple of glasses of crisp, ice cold Chenin to quench my blinding thirst – the water had been turned off…apparently…
So what of the soaked slices…?
It’s so robust it didn’t even flinch from being soaked for an hour! So, I dipped a finger in the water and guess what…? (I know this is boringly predictable isn’t it?) Ah-ha!! Gotcha!! It didn’t taste of salt! The soaking hadn’t made any difference at all except it had left a weird film on the water…I’ve chosen to ignore that. An apprehensive nibble at the corner of a piece revealed it to taste exactly the same – although at this point by tongue felt like a piece of beef jerky so it’s not to be trusted. I’m so loathe to reject, waste or give up on any food that I started imagining what I could do to salvage the Spam and keep it in the canon of allowable food stuffs. It was probably the chenin but I begun to think that if I made a form of Spam-hash from it (no! Not to smoke…) the potatoes might absorb and disperse the saltiness etc and hey panko it’d be transformed into a good hearty brunch item, slap a fried egg on it…mmmm…then the glass began to slip from my hand and I woke myself up from this nightmare and chucked the lot in the bin.
Spam is banished. Whatever preparation the underlying fact is it’s painfully high in fat and salt so why bother? There is never going to be another mention of it and the remaining tin I have at home will be ceremoniously destroyed. I applied to have it jettisoned into space but NASA predicted its salt content alone would cause it to return to earth within ninety minutes and probably clobber me on the head…karma innit…
Just to really mess with all our heads I did the exact same with a tin of corned beef as well. I have no idea why. None. The tin was there and I figured I’ll never eat it otherwise and caught up in the craziness of Spamgate I just went with it. I even tried an extra stage with the corned beef though – I added Branston pickle to the batter…
…I need to go and lie down…