I’m not sure I’ve had canned meat that wasn’t fish or chicken. I have had, and God help me have enjoyed, canned pasta with meat in it like Chef Boyardee Spaghetti with Meatballs, canned ravioli, and SpaghettiO’s with meatballs or with franks (which, alas, are no longer made). The Spaghetti with Meatballs I’ll eat straight from a can, unheated. Good camping food.
I find tuna in oil is more flavorful than water-packed tuna but my wife hates the oil-packed stuff so we usually only have the water-packed cans in the house. Brand names are irrelevant to me; it all tastes the same.
I’ve had the pre-made tuna salad – the stuff that comes in a can along with a little package of tasteless crackers – and while it isn’t bad, it isn’t anything that I’d eat on a regular basis. I used to keep a few at work as emergency lunches when we have unscheduled power outages. These days I just keep some HDR’s in my locker instead.
What is better than packaged tuna is packaged salmon. Chicken of the Sea. Combine one pack of the salmon with a big spoonful of full-fat mayo and some minced kosher dills and maybe a teaspoon of the pickle juice from the jar, mix it really well with a fork, let it sit for an hour or so for the flavors to meld, then spread the resulting pâté on some OG Wheat Thins and dig in… mmmm. Manna from heaven that stuff surely is.
I’m not a fan of canned chicken but I’ve taken it camping as it’s easier to store than fresh stuff that needs to live in a cooler.
Edit:
Like others who I’m too lazy to quote here, I like pickled herring in a wine brine. Not the cream brine. Put a thin slice of Swiss cheese on a piece of hot toast, add the herring. Yummy stuff.
I love the creamed pickled herring. The wine stuff is good, too, but not as good.
I also like canned sardines and canned mackerel. I get it plain, in oil, with no seasoning except salt. I keep a few cans of fish around, and it’s an easy lunch with some wasa crisps.
I confess to liking both canned corned beef and spam. Both are kinda gross, but they also taste good. They both need to be browned before eating.
For years now, Chunk Lite Tuna = Tuna Water w/ shreds, so I’d buy Solid White Albacore. That too has become Tuna Water w/ shreds, so I buy the foil packets.
Cecil addressed the whole Spam situation in 1998, including an aside about travel writer Paul Theroux’s claim that Pacific Islanders like it because it tastes like “long pig.” There’s more Theroux humor than anthropology there. At Bruce Chatwin’s funeral a few days after the Ayatollah put a death sentence on Salman Rushdie, Theroux greeted Rushdie with “I guess we’ll be here for you next week!”
Hormel’s Spam was too much of a meat packing behemoth to beat by smaller, better competitors, namely Patrick Cudahy’s Hamdingers. Now lost to history save in MST3K lore
I keep cans of chicken meat so I can whip up the chicken salad my wife and others who like chicken salad adore. I’m not a fan of chicken salad but this one is good. It’s just a basic chicken salad recipe with crushed walnuts and Craisins tossed in.
I use to get a corned beef at the grocery store labeled as Product of Argentina or something like that. Great flavor but something between the consistency or Spam and Deviled Ham, kinda like a chunky spread.
Imported tuna from Italy and Portugal are excellent. I get the stuff packed in oil for the best flavor and consistency but maybe too oily for some. The water packed stuff is good too.
There was a recent thread about canned bacon. I use to get a canned bacon that was made in Poland. It came with a key to like a sardine can to open a metal strip on the side. Inside were many strips of pre-cooked bacon wrapped up in parchment paper. Great for camping, but nothing really special about it.
Canned crab meat is good. There was a good deal on Bumblebee 6 oz. cans of lump crabmeat. They have something call White Crab Meat which is just mush. The larger 1 lb. and 8 oz. containers of crab meat are often available and on sale. I mainly use the claw meat for the economy and flavor. Mostly to make crab cakes. I use the Lump meat when it’s a reasonable price.
Does canned chili (without beans) fit into this conversation anywhere? Hormel is halfway decent. Dennison’s, on the other hand, is a little bland, and a little too thick for my liking.
Also, this isn’t quite what the OP had in mind, but I have noticed that, while canned spaghetti with meatballs and tomato sauce is fairly good, spaghetti with meat sauce barely qualifies as edible IMO.
A guy I worked with in Moscow told me his dad loved Spam. I told him he probably ate it during the War, and there were still crates full of the stuff sitting in warehouses in Murmansk. (The Russian equivalent of Spam is called tushonka.)
When Big Lots first opened here, it was all messy and disorganized and I liked it that way. You never knew what you were going to find. Contrary to finding it depressing, I thought it was kind of a treasure hunt. Then it got all nice and tidy and it looked just like Target. Then it became depressing. No fun any more. Still, I’m sorry to see it go. You can find some very interesting groceries there. Once I found a box of Pop-Tarts (the regular mainstream brand), but guava-flavored. I guess it wasn’t very popular in whatever market it was destined for.
Thanks for all these great posts. I learned a few things. I think I will buy a can of that Underwood deviled ham just for grins.
I prefer tuna packed in olive oil-- the single-serving envelopes. If I’m buying cans, I want the “light” (not white) tuna packed in oil. The water-packed is too, well, watery.
I wish I had a can of corned beef hash in the cupboard right now to fix with a couple of eggs. That really sounds good.
Canned chili fits here, and Wolf brand is the best one. But if I just want it to put on hot dogs, then I’ll get Hormel, because it’s the only one that comes in small cans in my H-E-B. Likewise, canned ravioli and spaghetti sort of belong here, too. Although, I prefer Stouffer’s frozen spaghetti with meatballs/sauce over the canned product.
Has anyone ever tried the jarred German “hot dog”-looking products that they sell at World Market?
Actually World Market has a bunch of meat and fish products from outside the USA, including tuna in jars. Anyone familiar with any of these?
I like to make tuna and salmon patties, and the canned stuff works best for that. Canned chicken and beef is also useful for making quick noodles, and I have tried (but not liked) doing a chicken patty like the tuna ones.
Most other meat canned stuff has way too much fat for me. I even have to be careful with the beef.
(As I posted in the Shrinkflation thread) corned beef hash has gone downhill too. I used to open both ends and slice off solid disks for frying. Now it almost pours out like sludge. Nowadays bread and pasta are the only things I don’t make from scratch.
You are right about this. I scrape it out of the can and shape it into a disc in the frying pan. The let it get very very crispy on the bottom before turning it over (in pieces, 'cause it falls apart) and letting that side crispify, too. Near the end, add the eggs and cover. If it’s not crispy, the texture is all wrong.
If those came in cans, I’d buy them. They don’t, do they?
Historical food note: Cornish pasties were made with a thick crimped edge along one side so the tin miners could use the crimp as a handle to hold on to while eating. Their hands would often be covered in arsenic from the mine, so they would discard the handle when they were done. (This might be a myth.)
I’ve done this. In fact I have a couple of cans of Spam in the cabinet and I keep thinking it’s time for me to do it again.
Another thing I haven’t done in a while that I used to do all the time was roll Vienna sausages in Pillsbury biscuits. Sometimes before rolling them up I would sprinkle a little shredded cheese inside. And put some mustard in a little cup/bowl to dip them into.
