For starters, I refer you (but do not limit you) to this site:
Those teeny Underwood cans, wrapped neatly in white paper, are so cute. They look like they would taste good. I’ve stared at the Underwood cans in the grocery story but have never bought one. Should I? Are they tasty? The Underwood site shows some products I’ve never seen in my H-E-B-- “Maple ham”? “Liverwurst”? How good can liver from a can be?
There’s always Spam. I read/watch a lot of cooking sites and Spam figures in plenty of recipes outside the USA, particular Asia. Not sure why. I liked it as a kid. Bought a can recently… sooo salty and greasy. I’d have to be in the mood.
Canned corned beef used to turn up in one of my mother’s (not welcome) recipes entitled, “Corned Beef and English Peas.” Not sure why we need to blame the English for that. However, I still buy canned corned beef hash and fry it until it’s very crispy, then break a couple of eggs into indentations, cover, and let them sort of poach. Very good!
And what about the little weenies in a can, glorified with the name “Vienna Sausage.” Sausage? Hardly. They come in flavors now, too.
Tell me about other canned meats-- do you have favorites and favorite ways of eating/serving? Some you will never eat again?
P.S. For purposes of discussion, we can include fish, i.e., tuna, sardines, kippers, even those little tuna salad kits. (BTW, BumbleBee are better than Chicken of the Sea.)
In my childhood, my mom bought potted meat, vienna sausages, and spam. As a growing kid, who was very slender and always hungry, I probably needed the calories that these products provided. They were not any better, healthwise, for a person than they are now, but I rarely ate them, and they were a treat. As a child, I thought that they were, anyway, bc so seldom served.
The stuff you refer to is grainy and salty and fatty. A thin spread of it on bread is OK, or crackers, but it is kind of a pulverized version of Spam. I no longer eat this stuff bc I am 66 and it doesn’t taste all that good to me…so salty! I wonder if it was a different product when I was a kid.
That packaging is seductive, isn’t it? And that cute little happy devil is funny. But you can’t tell a book by its cover…or canned meat by its can design, either.
IIRC, this is a leftover from WW II. The army sent Spam over with the soldiers, and also to help the locals who’d been impacted by the war, and it just sort of stuck around. It’s big in Hawaii, too.
The Devilwood chicken spread is pretty good on crackers … why would you want liverwurst in a can when you could have a pound of it in the tube (like ground sausage)
One thing I’ve noticed is since Star Kist came up with it and it’s popular now is meat in a can is slowly transitioning to meat in a pouch …usually flavored
hard disagree on this one. I mean, don’t get me wrong, canned chicken, by itself, is rather bland and uninteresting. But it can be a quick and effective ingredient in a bunch of dishes such as casseroles, chicken enchiladas and tacos, chicken salad, white bean and chicken chili, etc. Saves you the time and hassle of cooking and cutting/shredding fresh chicken and it easily fades into the background and takes on the taste of the other ingredients in a dish. Definitely has important uses and is a real time-saver.
We keep a supply of canned meats. Spam, chicken, sardines, etc. It’s primarily for emergencies. You’re supposed to be able to survive a week on what’s in your home, in case a massive disaster strikes your area. We could just throw it out when it expires, but instead we occasionally eat a can and replenish the stock.
Spam is great cut into thick slabs, grilled, placed on rice, and wrapped in toasted seaweed. Sardines are great on toast or crackers, as a protein side to a salad. Canned chicken gets mixed with BBQ sauce and slow cooked; makes great sloppy joes.
I like making Spam Musubi. My gf always sneers at the Spam can, but by the time I’ve marinaded, pan fried, and wrapped with rice and nori, she is happy to eat it.
I love pickled fish in a jar. Another item my gf isn’t too sure about, but then there’s more for me.
I eat sardines on thinly sliced bread slathered with mustard fairly often. I neither like nor dislike it but it’s a great way to get tons of protein for relatively few calories.
I haven’t had Underwood deviled ham since I was a child, when I thought it was delicious. Now I think I may have to get a can and see if I still like it.
Spam is pretty nasty stuff on its own, but it’s hugely popular in Hawai’i and Spam musubi (invented here, I think) are surprisingly good. I make them from time to time, using a recipe from the New York Times of all places.
When/if you can get good tomatoes: try adding tomato slices on top of/around the eggs; cover as above.
One of my favorite breakfasts. – I like the store brand hash which, counterintuitively, is less fatty than the name brands. That might depend on where you are.
– most of the canned meats just taste like salty fat to me; or at least used to, I haven’t tried most of them in years. I tried canned chicken once but didn’t much like it and it’s relatively expensive compared to buying even pre-cooked rotisserie chicken, let alone cooking whole or split chickens myself and just freezing some for fast meals. I do like most canned fish (but not anchovies).
When I was stocking shelves at Safeway one of my aisles included the canned meat. I was always a little curious about a lot of the stuff but I never tried any, aside from the tuna and sardines maybe.
I mostly remember a lot of that stuff being easy to re-stock because the case was basically a display already that you just ripped the cover off of, and BAM replace the whole thing, done.
Vienna sausages always looked really bad to me in the photo on the label, and also look exactly like the little sausages for babies:.
The best canned tuna is the Kirkland Albacore from Costco. Their canned chicken is very good too. We try to always have a few cans of each on hand for emergency lunches.
We also like the ‘less sodium’ cans of spam, for fried spam sandwiches.
Musabi is good stuff, but we never make it ourselves.
Also, pickled herring (from a jar) is an occasional treat, but hard to find.
I’ve never found any canned corned beef hash that I liked, however.
There is a Big Lots near us that I very rarely enter. Maybe every 5 years or so. It’s just really depressing inside. However, they have so many canned meats options, especially sardines!!!
Of course if you buy one you really like, you can rest assured it won’t be there when you return.
I tend to be very particular about fish and the idea of pickled fish would normally be abhorrent to me, except that I used to enjoy pickled herring as a child and still love it. Pickled herring in wine sauce with onions, served up on a dish with a dollop of sour cream on the side, is a great start to any meal. Not for everyone, but I love the stuff! It’s not really hard to find around here, though a few stores don’t carry it.
Otherwise, not a fan of any kind of canned meat or fish. Though I do have a can of sardines in olive oil that I bought in a moment of whimsy some time ago that I’ve been thinking of having on toast sometime.
However, I still buy canned corned beef hash and fry it until it’s very crispy, then break a couple of eggs into indentations, cover, and let them sort of poach. Very good!