All posts filed under: Meat

Spam, Umeboshi, and Egg Musubi

Published by

Spam musubi are rice balls (onigiri or omusubi) that are topped with Spam and wrapped with nori; they are different from sushi because musubi rice is plain or seasoned with salt, whereas sushi rice is seasoned with vinegar, sugar, and salt. They are a popular in Hawaii and are great as breakfast or a portable snack. They are easy to bring along for a hike. The simplest Spam musubi are made from rice, salt, spam, and nori, but many variations can be made. Musubi Cafe Iyasume, which was just around the corner from the hotel I stayed at in Honolulu, offers avocado egg bacon Spam, umeboshi cucumber Spam, teriyaki Spam, egg cucumber Spam, and shiso Spam. The umeboshi version is my favorite since it is salty from the Spam and sour from the umeboshi. The recipe below combines Spam, umeboshi, and egg; it makes 6 musubi using a “mini” 7 oz can of Spam. If you’d like to use a regular 12 oz can of Spam, then double the recipe but make 10 musubi. Tare is a Japanese term for a sweetened, thickened soy sauce; each …

Onigiri Burger

Published by

Mos burger is a Japanese fast food chain which offers Asian-style fast food. Instead of hamburger buns, several of their “hamburgers” are enclosed by rice pressed into a bun shape. When I was in Taiwan, I went a to baseball game; Mos burger was one of the stands in the stadium so I got to try them. I was disappointed in the taste of their fillings, but I was captivated by the idea of a rice bun for a hamburger, so I wanted to make my own version. My “onigiri burger” or “rice burger” is loosely inspired by Mos burger; however the flavorings are quite different than what Mos burger offers and I chose to season my rice with furikake, which is a Japanese condiment that is often sprinkled on top of rice. These onigiri burgers are a messy but fun and satisfying dish. The recipe below offers two variations: one made with a hamburger patty and one made with thinly sliced leftover roast pork. You could also experiment with other meats or fillings–Mos burger offers several …

Hawaiian Luau! Oven-Roasted Kalua Pork

Published by

I like Hawaiian food for many reasons. It is a meld of many types of cuisines: Polynesian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, American, Portuguese, and more–many of which I like to cook. Hawaiian food also has retro and vintage flair. Tiki first become in style in the mid-century, possible because American soldiers brought stories back about Polynesia and the South Pacific when they returned home after WWII and the commercial airline industry made travel more accessible. The bright colored (and often over-the-top) Hawaiian prints and rum drinks make tiki fun, and the tropical climate, flowers, and warm waters are something to long for. And it makes me reminisce about relaxation, a slow-paced small town life, and vacations (particularly the vacation that my parents surprised my sister and I with as a Christmas present years ago and the vacation that William and I took in Hawaii about a year ago). Kalua literally means “to cook in an underground oven” in Hawaiian (wiki). It is a traditional Hawaiian cooking method which uses an imu, a type of underground oven made from a dirt pit which is …

Chicken Stock

Published by

My mother often made stock at home, so I tried out making stock soon after I started cooking. Michael Ruhlman’s is by far the simplest and easiest stock recipe that I’ve found, and it has given me the best results so far. I used a combination of Michael Ruhlman’s chicken stock recipe on his blog, and the chicken stock recipe in “Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook’s Manifesto” and some other tips from recipes that I’ve read over the years. The difference between the two recipes is that in the book, he suggests chicken has cooked in water for several hours and then adding the vegetables and aromatics and then cooking for 1 hour more. On the blog, he cooks everything together. When you break down a chicken, you can save the spare parts (e.g. backbone), in a bag in the freezer until you have enough to make stock. You can also save the carcass from a roasted chicken to make a dark roast chicken stock, . Cooking the stock in the oven was a revelation …