Home-baked spam

[ChrisGreaves]

I have been salting raw meat for about a month, but then decided to have a shot at making //baking spam.
Ingredients

5 lbs - Pork Shoulder (ground)	1.4 K or 3.15 lbs
1 lb - Ham (ground)	1lb 4oz bacon.rashers
2 TBS + 1 tsp - Tender Quick	N
3 TBS - Sugar	Y
3 TBS - Corn Starch	Y
1 TBS - Kosher Salt	Y
1 Cup - Cold Water	Y

The table with suggested ingredients and the measure of ingredients I used.
Directions

Mix Tender Quick, sugar, cornstarch, Kosher salt and cold water together until everything is dissolved.
Combine with ground meat and thoroughly mix.
Spread mixture into 2 - 9x5 loaf pans and press firmly to remove air bubbles.
Tightly seal with aluminum foil, place into a water bath and then into a 250º oven for 3-3.5 hours or until they reach an internal temperature of 155º.	12:30 to 15:30
Remove from oven, place a heavy flat object (I used a brick) on top while still hot.
Let thoroughly cool, then place into the refrigerator with brick overnight.
Remove SPAM from pans and slice as desired.
Optionally sterilize in jars.

20231227_093048.jpg

Here are the two loaf tins after weighting and waiting in the refrigerator overnight.

20231227_093127.jpg

The first loaf turned out. I edged around it with a bread knife then gently levered one end up, and as gently, turned it upside down to let it slide out of the loaf tin.

20231227_093211.jpg

Of course I took a slice and ate it. Delicious! And that was just the pork and ham, no added spices or flavours uet. And no artificial colouring either.
Now to pack it into jars.
Next time:-
(1) If I baked it in the jars in the oven, weighed down with a piston of some sort, I could then just screw on the lids and sterilize it, without breaking it up, admitting air, to move it to the jars.
(2) Use washed bricks, and use fresh foil. Unwashed bricks shed grit onto the top surface of the foil, and re-used foil sometimes has punctures that allow the gelatin/liquor to seep up atop the foil.

I am pleased with this; my pantry is stocked with basic supplies, and I maintain an inventory with the latest price of pork and other fresh meats in the two supermarkets. Now when I see that pork (or any other basic meat) is On Special, I can load up with three or four pounds of it and bring it home.

I gather that the home-cooked spam, at least, can be sterilized in jars. I could, of course, freeze it in small-capacity margarine tubs.
Cheers, Chris

[GeoffW]

If you get an email inviting you to a Chris Greaves meal, don't open it.

It's spam.

[ChrisGreaves]

If you get an email inviting you to a Chris Greaves meal, don't open it. It's spam.

Well at least we now know one naughty little boy who won't be invited to the feast ...
Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

I have been salting raw meat for about a month, but then decided to have a shot at making //baking spam.

I continue to make spam.
I stopped using the loaf-tin-and-housebrick method, and instead tamp the mixture into half-pint preserving jars, from which I can dig out two tablespoons of spam to dice and use as the base for a dandelion salad. No doubt about it. Anytime the price of boneless pork shoulder/loin drops below $13/Kg it is time to grab four or eight packs and make spam.

In my latest effort (always looking to cut time and work), I minced the bacon and pork twice, then tossed the lot into a pan to render down.

20240215_103355.jpg

Don't try this at home kids!
This time I did NOT render the fat out of the bacon. Note the layers or skins of pure fat. I have modified the recipe card at home with a note to render down the diced bacon and drain off the fat before mincing it up with the pork.
Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

This recipe has a caveat if your neighbour across the street is named Jennifer. Once your kitchen is re-organized you will, first thing in the morning, reach for the tea-jar and wonder (a) why it is in a soft-plastic jar instead of solid glass (b) with a blue lid instead of a brass screw-on lid and (c) smells like coffee instead of tea. Especially if for five years you have been able to reach out with sleep-rimmed eyes to the same spot (N.Amer "exact same spot") in the left-hand cupboard at eye-level.

Fast forward to last Tuesday, time to use up those three Real Cheap packets of raw pork bought at Swyers before the pork goes yellow. (You didn't know that pork goes yellow, did you?)
Send the packet of bacon through the hand mincer, into fry-pan to drain off excess fat, meanwhile sending the raw pork (pink) through the mincer. Add it to the fry-pan to render down along with the bacon.
Meanwhile back at the counter, in a bowl mix 2 tblsp cornflour, 3 tblsp Sugar, 1 tblsp salt and 1 cup water to make a sauce.
Quickly check the fry-pan, then back to the mixing bowl and find that it has all turned YELLOW.

Thanks to Jennifer I am now probably the only male in Bonavista eating vanilla custard flavoured potted meat.

Be warned.
Cheers, Chris

[HansV]

Not only in Bonavista, and not only male...

The admins of Eileen's Lounge have ample experience with removing spam. Let us know if you need our help.

[ChrisGreaves]

The admins of Eileen's Lounge have ample experience with removing spam. Let us know if you need our help.

Thanks Admins. I appreciate your generous offer, but the dandelions will be out in force Real Soon Now, and I need to ramp-up (rump-up?) spam production for salad days.
Cheers, Chris

[hlewton]

Tightly seal with aluminum foil, place into a water bath

Many questions about this. First what does a water bath do? If they are tightly sealed, again what does a water bath do? Most importantly, what is a water bath?

[ChrisGreaves]

Tightly seal with aluminum foil, place into a water bath

Many questions about this. First what does a water bath do? If they are tightly sealed, again what does a water bath do? Most importantly, what is a water bath?

Hi hlewton.
A water-bath is a bath of water. Normally it will be a mass of water contained ("he;ld") in a container that is impervious, and hence imperious to water. An example of a water batch could be a bath (the shortened form of "water bath" in your bathroom. Another example could be an old mug found lying in a garden in Bonavista, the mug being full of rain-water. Such a bath would not be of much use to a human as would a bath in a bath room, but it could serve to house a frog. Birds might use it as a bird-bath, but birds are famous for drinking the bath-water of other bird's bathing activity, except in winter time when temperatures typically drop well below the freezing-point of water, even, well, well-water in a well, although I have not yet observed a bird flying into a well to take a bath. In the Goldfields Water Supply scheme engineered by Charles Yelverton O'Connor, his one-hundred-foot diameter concrete reservoirs ("tanks") were used as bird-baths by the thirsty desert birds on the three-hundred-mile path that the water took as its trip from Mundaring to the Kalgoorlie Goldfields. The birds, unaccustomed to large pools of water, were unable to land (they were parrots rather than ducks) and could not fly out of the tanks, and so drowned and infected the water. Hence a plague of boils would travel up the pipeline and smite each wheat-belt town along the way. This is my childhood experience from the mid 1950s on-wards. Hence my comments about birds drinking other bird's bathwater.

In making spam, my water bath is a two-or three-gallon steel pan with a loose fitting lid. Into it I place three quart jars ⁽¹⁾ with lids screwed on finger-tight, and surround the jars with water. On the stove-top I bring the water to a boil, turned down the heat and simmer until the contents of the jars can be seen boiling, then remove the three jars and set them on a cake-rack (or a biscuit-rack in a pinch) to cool as rapidly as possible. Standard air pressure seals the lidded jars. I have in my possession a jar of carrots that I bottled in Toronto back in mid 2018; the carrots are still in beautiful condition and sit on a shelf in my kitchen.

Once I can move freely about my kitchen (right now it has a rotary tiller spread across the floor from yesterday's trip to Lethbridge and Clarenville) I will take some photos and include them in this response.

Cheers, chris

⁽¹⁾ Or four pint-jars^(2)
(2) Or five half-pint jars

[HansV]

This method is known in French as "au bain-marie", and we have loaned this epxression in Dutch.

[ChrisGreaves]

This method is known in French as "au bain-marie", and we have loaned this expression in Dutch.

Speaking of which, you'll never guess what I picked up in the five cartons of books from Clarenville Library yesterday.
Vrolijk, Chris

[HansV]

Have fun with it! (The publisher van Dale is the Dutch equivalent of Merriam-Webster)

[hlewton]

On the stove-top I bring the water to a boil, turned down the heat and simmer until the contents of the jars can be seen boiling, then remove the three jars and set them on a cake-rack (or a biscuit-rack in a pinch) to cool as rapidly as possible. Standard air pressure seals the lidded jars. I have in my possession a jar of carrots that I bottled in Toronto back in mid 2018; the carrots are still in beautiful condition and sit on a shelf in my kitchen.

This sounds a lot like what my mother and grandmother used to call "canning." I never did it my self.

I love tomatoes and when my mom passed away and we had to clean out her house, I found a quart of canned tomatoes. Maybe they should have been called, stewed tomatoes, I don't know. However the date on the jar lid was 10 years prior to her death. They still looked good so I decided to put them in the refrigerator to get them nice and cold. Then I opened them and cautiously tasted them. My wife and I ate the entire quart in one sitting. They were delicious. Apparently, "canning" or "water bath" preserves very well.

[ChrisGreaves]

This sounds a lot like what my mother and grandmother used to call "canning." I never did it my self.

Go for it!
The first post in this topic has an image "20231227_093048.jpg (133.99 KiB)" of a loaf tin being baked while sitting in a large oven-tray of water. I think that that is what the original recipe called a "water-bath". After that first shot I decided to do my canning directly into jars, since I preserve most surplus food that way; also pork or chicken when it is On Special.

The fourth image 20240215_103355.jpg (137.36 KiB) shows the next batch bottled in standard bottling jars. But don't let that stop you using screw-top jars with metal lids lined with a thin grey rubbery gasket (think "Sweet relish" and "piccalilli" from your local grocer's shop). I use those jars for batches of smaller quantities. I might fill five quart jars with something and put the bit that remains into a screw-top relish jar.

There's really no excuse for NOT bottling ("Nottling"?) as long as one has a single-ring stove, and a pan that will hold the jars in boiling water.

When my wife suggested bottling back in 1973 I poo-poohed the idea - too much work when one could buy tin-canned tomatoes in the main street; But wifey insisted that I buy two half-flats of ripe tomatoes on the way home from work. I compared the cost of the tomatoes with the cost of cans to prove my point about economy, and promptly
I've been hooked on preserving ever since.
Cheers, Chris

[hlewton]

My wife and I are both retired, so we just don't have the time for preserving.

[ChrisGreaves]

My wife and I are both retired, so we just don't have the time for preserving.

Me neither; I keep having parts left over from today's trial assembly of my rotary hoe!
I am expecting to pulverize a HUGE crop of tomatoes this year.
Cheers, Chris