I’m from Hawaii and grew up eating Spam. I know that a lot of people on the mainland find processed, canned meat products disgusting but to me it seemed completely ordinary. I’ll admit that I no longer eat Spam as often as I used to but every so often I indulge.

Spam musubi is an easy, portable way to eat Spam. You can find it all over Hawaii, often in convenience stores. It looks like a large nigiri sushi with molded rice on the bottom, topped with Spam, and held together with a strip of nori.

You can find varieties of Spam beyond the original “flavor.” There are the “healthy” varieties like low-sodium and turkey Spam. And more recently I found these spicy varieties:

The musubi require cooked white rice (the sticky kind, not long grain type), sushi nori, and Spam. I prep everything then use a large onigiri mold to form the rice – these are made especially for Spam musubi.

You can leave the Spam as it is, just pan fry it quickly. I like to fry it in a bit of teriyaki-type sauce made with soy sauce, brown sugar, and a little yellow mustard. It just adds a little extra flavor and the sauce seeps down into the rice.

You can use as much or as little of any of the ingredients as you like. Sometimes I’ll mix some furikake into the rice to give it some extra flavor.

Wrap these in some plastic wrap and they’re good to go. I was on a train down to New York last weekend and took a couple of these as my road trip snack. I’m not sure what other passengers on the train thought but it didn’t matter. It was the perfect thing for me.