Spam: The Cookbook

by Linda Eggers

Celebrate this miracle meat in a can with a one-of-a-kind cookbook.

Genres: Cookbooks

Paperback

First published October 25, 2001

Reviews

[Gina · Rating 1 out of 5]

I ate Spam frequently as a kid. My grandparents were big fans of fried Spam sandwiches - essentially Spam pan fried crispy between two pieces of white bread with mayo - and I ate my share when visiting their house during summer. Until this cookbook, however, I hadn't eaten Spam since I was still in single digits, except for a friend from Hawaii's Musubi (more on that below). My husband, aka guinea pig on my cookbook journey, had never eaten Spam before this month. So why a Spam cookbook? While visiting family in Iowa over the most recent holidays, I discovered the Spam factory and museum. We didn't have a chance to visit at the time, but just knowing it exists brought on great discussion about the product and my strong need for a museum t-shirt. The family we were visiting got this for me as a Christmas gift - a semi-joke. How could I resist trying it out?

This is a tiny cookbook. It is about the size of a postcard and only about 1/2 inch thick, if even that. The recipes are divided by region of the country - 4 regions - with ingredients specific to each region included in the Spam dishes. This introduces such favorites as Spam Stuffed Apples (northwest), Spam Jambalaya (southeast), Spam Cakes (northeast) and Spam Salad (Midwest). Each of the recipes are submissions with the person's name and location included with the recipe. I tried to find out more information on whether these were from a contest or collected in some other way but was unsuccessful. I made way more recipes than my husband wanted, but considering he wanted 0 made, I made as many as I could. Spam is cheap and easy to work with, so all of these recipes were easy to make requiring only the most basic cooking skills - except the Musubi (a classic Spam preparation in Hawaii). The instructions were clear but not as detailed as I want from a professionally published cookbook. Unfortunatly, I didn't make a single recipe I would make again. The Spam salad was the least offensive but it made a HUGE bowl, meaning a good bit went into the trash after a couple of days. A friend from Hawaii made me Musubi, sort of like Spam sushi, and I loved it. Neither of the recipes (2 total) in this cookbook compared well to my prior experience with it. It isn't that any of the recipes I made were bad. It is just that they weren't that good.

This was a fun semi-joke gift. I enjoyed making Spam recipes this month even if I won't ever make them again. But I can't recommend this as an actual cookbook.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am hungry