Spam and Leftovers Stir Fry
Have you ever eaten spam? I hadn’t, but I bought a couple of tins on sale for 70c AUD (50c USD) each …and then left them in the pantry for two years. Recently however, I decided to clean out my pantry and gave it a try by making a stir fry. Here’s how I made it and how you can too:
Ingredients:
-1 340g (12 Oz) Tin of Spam (I couldn’t find an expiry but it was packed 3 years ago so I think it’s ok)
-1 Cup of Raw Rice (I used some “sushi rice” I found that expired two and a half years ago)
-1 Carrot and 1 Celery Stick (You can use whatever veggies you have here, this is just what I had)
Sauce:
-Sesame oil-Lime Juice
-Rice Wine Vinegar
-Worcestershire Sauce
-Oyster Sauce
-Minced Garlic
Garnish:
-Mayonnaise
-Nori (Seaweed Sheets) (Also expired by more than two years. I was gonna make sushi, I swear)
Cooking:
1. Cook the rice as per instructions on the packet. I cooked the sushi rice by adding the 1 cup of rice and 1 ½ cups of water to a microwavable container and cooking in the microwave for 13 minutes at max power (800W microwave). From past experiences I find that this method normally works for other types of white rice. If it is not cooked enough after this time, cook it for a couple more minutes. If your microwave is a different power to mine, divide 800 by your microwaves power and then cook at that percentage. For example, if your microwave is 1200W, do 800/1200 = 0.667 or 66.7%. Then round to the nearest ten, in this case 70%. Therefore you would cook the rice for 13 minutes at 70% power rather than full power.
2. Mix up the sauce. I did not use exact measurements for this, I just added a bit of this and a bit of that until I got a flavour I liked. You can use whatever sauces you have, be creative. Please remember though that spam is very salty so avoid using too much soy sauce, oyster sauce or any other salty additives. The rice wine vinegar and the lime juice created a tangy, slightly acidic flavour that countered the saltiness of the spam.
3. Cut up the spam into small cubes, I made mine about 1–2cm cubed (~ ½ an inch cubed). Cook the spam on a medium heat in a fry pan with a little oil (unless you have non-stick pan) until the edges have a nice bit of colour on them. Then remove the spam into a bowl for now.
4. Cut up the veggies (if needed) and cook them in the same pan the spam was in. Since the carrot and celery are hard vegetables, I added some water to the pan and put on a lid to allow them to steam for a little while. This step will vary in time depending on how cooked you like your veggies and what ones they are.
5. Add the spam, rice and sauce into the pan, one at a time, making sure to mix well before adding in the each item. I recommend moving to a high heat at this stage, make sure to be stirrin’ so nothing starts burnin’.
6. Taste the rice to see how strong the flavour of your sauce has carried through the dish. If it is not to your liking you may need to mix up some more to add in. At this stage I added in some onion powder (If I had proper onions I would have definitely added to the dish) and ground cinnamon because, why not?
7. Once everything is mixed nicely and any excess sauce has steamed off (If your stir fry looks like it is sitting in a puddle, you probably added too much sauce) you can take off the pan off the heat. Your stir fry is now ready to serve. I served mine with a side of mayo and some nori. The spam I bought was actually a spicy spam, so the mayonnaise acted as a nice refresher for the mouth. The nori? Yeah… that was completely random.
Take away thoughts
But how does it taste you might be asking? I would give it a 4.3/10, then take 0.3 away because of the high salt content, giving this dish a score of 4/10. If you would like to understand how I rate the quality of my meals, I wrote a short article here.
This recipe is simply a basic stir fry. You can replace the spam with any meat, the carrot and celery with any other vegetable, the sauce with any cocktail of flavour you like. Even the rice you could replace with noodles, pasta or a bed of mash potato.
I do not recommend you go out and buy anything to make this meal, but maybe you have got some sort of idea that can help you get through to the next pay check. Or, if you are like me, and you do not want to leave your wombat hole to buy food, this recipe can allow you to put off food shopping for another day or two.
Follow for more budget recipes, experimental recipes, cheap living ideas and other general wombat shenanigans. Thanks for reading, have a great day! ^‿^
