In hard time , masses have been known to bend debatably unsuitable ingredients into with child cuisine . And it ’s exactly what Koreans did withSPAMin the 1950s .
Food shortages plagued Korea in the wake of World War II and during the Korean War , and fresh meat was often impossible to find . One of the most authentic way to get something to eat was to draw up outside U.S. army radix and purchase their leftovers — or salvage them from dumpsters . The processed foods the war machine was unforced to throw away — which included SPAM , spicy dogs , canned franks and beans , and American cheese singles — were far from abode preparation , but they were a good reference of salt , calorie , and protein . Korean Cook addedtheir own spinto the ingredients by boiling them together in a stew along with kimchi , gochujang ( a turn red chili paste ) , and whatever else they had memory access to — which often included some form of dome . The result recipe was distinctly Korean despite its undeniably American DNA .
Budae - jjigae , or “ US Army basis lather , ” was fundamentally an underground dish in the country until the 1980s , with many hoi polloi source ingredients on the black grocery . Despite this , South Korea — like many other countries and territories take by the U.S. during the twentieth century — hasn’t been able to sweep over itsSPAMobsession . ( North Korea manufactures itsown SPAM - like canned meat ) . So how exactly did SPAM go from thrifty convenience meat to one of America ’s most successful culinary export ? Before we find out , let ’s take a look at its humble beginning in the Midwest .
Hormel’s Meaty Innovation
It was a game - record changer . The product was made by packing ham actor into vacuum - seal containers and cooking the meat in the can , thus keep it novel and sapid until it was ready to consume . It wasdeboned , but unlike SPAM , it was awhole pieceof recognizable nub … in a can .
Its introduction coincide with the showtime of a quiet rotation taking place in American kitchens . Technological initiation like therefrigeratorsaved char time that they otherwise would have spent shop for impudent groceries and preserve them through laborious methods like curing and pickling . In gain to new appliances , novel types of foodlightened the domestic load placed on homemakers . transcribed ham live month in the pantry , and it was ready to eat as soon as it was opened . Even if home cooks gussied it up with pineapples or sugar , it was still less prison term take than picking up a smart ham from the butcher and cooking it whole .
From Canned Ham to SPAM
Jay Hormelbecame president of his dad ’s company in the belated twenties , and he had some big ideas for the firebrand — one of which was turning the waste product leftover from butcher pork into a brand new case of solid food . Though it ’s a worthy ( and yummy ) deletion of pith today , pig shoulder was widely considered garbage intellectual nourishment at that fourth dimension in America . Hormel was discarding mess of the scrap each year , so Jay devised a plan to become them into something consumers would require to eat . The processors at Hormeldid thisby remove the meat from the os , travail it into a spread , and adding flavorings and preservative . The motley was then void - sealed and prepare in its container — just like canned jambon .
It may have a dubious reputation today , but in the beginning , junk e-mail turn back just six ingredients : pork barrel , water , salt , sugar , and sodium nitrate . The recipe for SPAM remained the same until fairly late , when Hormel added potato amylum to the mix . The new ingredient does n’t change the flavor and is instead mean to soak up the layer of gelatin that signifier when SPAM is falsify , giving it a more appetizing coming into court .
SPAM was packaged like Flavor - Sealed Ham and had a similarly retentive shelf life , but it was n’t canned ham , exactly . Hormel needed a name for the point that would convey its culinary hope without arrive at any simulated claims . So , like any sensible businessman , Jay Hormel draft his drunk friends . According toLifemagazine , he hosted a New Year ’s Eve political party in which the “ Leontyne Price ” of each drink was a possible name for the new product , write on a slip of paper . He offer a $ 100 prize to whomever could come up with the winning name . As Hormel recalled , “ Along about the third or fourth drink they began showing some imagination . ”
An actor named Ken Daigneau received the $ 100 trophy for his poor - and - sweet-scented cognomen . Ken was the blood brother ofR.H. Daigneau , a Hormel Foods vice chairman .
We know where the name SPAM come from , but the jury ’s still out on what it means . Many theories have been floated over the decades , with some saying it ’s short for Shoulder of Pork and Ham . Others extend a less - pleasant option : Scientifically process Animal Matter . The most common belief is that junk e-mail is a blend ofspicedandham , despite the fact that the Cartesian product is neither spice up nor a ham . Hormel has n’t support any of the rumors , andinstead claimsthat the straight meaning “ is jazz by only a small circle of former Hormel Foods executive . ”
Hormel ’s creation was n’t the first fourth dimension someone had molded pork barrel scraps into a stop of mystery meat . For century , Pennsylvanians have stretched the definition of meat withscrapple — an economical breakfast item consisting of pork trimmings , Indian meal , and spices dogsled into a congealed loaf of bread . SPAM was interchangeable , but its promotional material made it singular . Like canned ham , a shelf - unchanging can of SPAM was a suitable choice for in use household cooks . Hormel marketed the product ’s versatility — it could be sliced , diced , baked , fried , or feed cold out of the container . It appealed to the country ’s growing taste for processed convenience foods . By 1940 , 70 percent of urban Americans were purchase canned meats , up from 18 per centum in 1937 .
SPAM and the Military
The transcribed meat was certainly on the intellect of American service members , some of whom were sick of being apply the stuff for breakfast , tiffin , and dinner . Private First Class Lewis B. Closser got so feed up with the monotonic diet that he wrote a letter of the alphabet to Hormel , asking them to not send any SPAM abroad for a few week , even if it intend he and his fellow military personnel would go hungry .
That ’s where the level , outline in a1944 issueofYank : The Army Weekly , takes a turn . Hormel drop a line back to Closser , claim that “ Since the state of war started , we have not sold a undivided can of SPAM to the U.S. Army . ” The missive said that the standard 12 - oz. cans of SPAM were n’t hard-nosed for Army utilization and exact that soldier were eat a unlike luncheon meat that GIs were incorrectly promise SPAM .
Can fill up ? Not exactly . According tothe bookSPAM : A Biographyby Carolyn Wyman , Hormel ’s letter kicked off a firestorm from army cooks and soldier swearing they had prepared and eaten the real stuff and nonsense . It culminated with a mental picture of a G.I. standing behind a line of true junk e-mail tins . Wyman says that Hormel seem again and find out that , in 1942 , the Armyhadordered a bunch of SPAM as a substitute for government luncheon inwardness . Plus , with all of the junk e-mail being sent overseas as part of Lend - Lease , it ’s possible that some got amuse into U.S. Army hands .
Either fashion , wherever the U.S. military die in the mid-20th century , SPAM seemed to follow . That had an unintended wallop on the world-wide culinary scene . DuringWorld War II , SPAM ( or some other canned product the great unwashed were calling SPAM , at least ) was just as democratic with G.I.s place in Hawaii as it was in Europe . Locals began incorporating it into their cuisine , though it was more out of essential than love for the piquant meat slabs .
In 1940 , afederal statutewas passed preventing owners of great fishing boats from receive licence if they were n’t U.S. citizens ; at the same fourth dimension , there were police preventing Japanese immigrants from obtaining U.S. citizenship . A year later , non - citizen were banned from using various fishing nets within one mile of Hawaii ’s shoreline . Together , these laws not only hurt Nipponese - Hawaiian fishermen , but other Hawaiians who relied on their fishing businesses for solid food and jobs . With a fix left in the local thriftiness , force out meat like junk e-mail became a life line .
The Global Success of SPAM
junk e-mail stuck around in Hawaii following World War II , and locals have transformed it from survival nutrient to a symbolisation of cultural pride . Every year the Honolulu neighborhood of Waikiki legion SPAM JAM , a festival where restaurants get to show offdisheslikeSPAM Musubi , a Hawaiian take on sushi featuring fried junk e-mail in place of fish enfold around rice with nori . The people of Hawaii consume more than 7 million cans of SPAM per twelvemonth , more per capita than any U.S. land .
junk e-mail has found similar success in nation throughout Asia and Polynesia . The U.S. brought the product to the Philippines during its colonization of the islands . TodaySPAMsilog — consisting of deep-fried SPAM served with eggs and garlic electrocute rice — is a democratic Filipino breakfast .
Budae - jjigae may be the most popular app for SPAM outside of America , but it was nearly no more than a radar target in Korea ’s culinary history . DuringPark Chung - hee’sleadership from 1961 to 1979 , South Korea imposed very high meat tariff , which fundamentally restricted SPAM to the wealthiest of high society . The exclusion ? citizenry who plump to the black market place , where they could buy tax - innocent SPAM shoot from the American bases .
Thanks to its high - end and black-market status , SPAM had evolved from something constitute in dumpsters to a prized constituent in the centre of many Koreans . The fact that fresh meat was still scarce in the postwar period boosted this perception .
Hormel license the product to a South Korean manufacturer in the 1980s , and it ’s been widely available there ever since , but its deluxe reputation remains . Today some Koreans exchange cans ofSPAM as giftson holidays . allot to theKorea Herald , “ SPAM gift sets report for 60 percent of annual sale ” in the commonwealth . Budae - jjigae is still a common means to consume the food , and there are evenrestaurant chainsdedicated to serve the decadent dish .
regular army foundation stew is beloved across generational pipeline in South Korea , but some diners refuse to separate it from its painful origins . In anarticle , sociologist Grace M. Cho called the dish a “ culinary parody and an iconic symbol of U.S. imperialism . ” But she does n’t abnegate the significant position it occupies in Korean culture . She also wrote that “ it represents the creativity that go forth from devastation , a legacy of the complicated relationship between Koreans and Americans . ” The global achiever of SPAM proves that citizenry have a knack for making lemonade out of lemons — even when those lemons come in the form of slimy canned meat .
This story was adapted from an episode of Food History on YouTube .
