Indefinitely, says Hormel ; "as long as the seal has remained intact, unbroken, and securely attached. Eat By Date says Spam starts to go a little off after about 5 years past the date, and says that storing them in the pantry at around 75 degrees Fahrenheit will help extend the shelf life.
Bottom line? Might want to restock your apocalypse kit every five years or so. Future you will thank past you! Spam hit the shelves on the very nearly patriotic day of July 5, Since then, there's been some shocking numbers associated with them, starting with World War II. The Allied army ran on Spam, and according to Time , they sent around 15 million cans of Spam a week to the soldiers, to the tune of around million cans by the time the war was over.
It's no wonder it was so closely associated with the war effort. It's also no wonder that the one billionth can of Spam rolled out of the factory in , and when it did, sales were only on the increase. Fast forward a few decades, and Marketplace says that by , more than 8 billion cans have been sold.
That's way more than just a mere ton of Spam — literally, as it just takes 2, cans of Spam to equal one ton. There's no signs that interest in Spam is going away anytime soon, either, as it shows up in an estimated one in three American households.
Think Spam's a hit in your household? There's a good chance you don't have anything on Guam, because according to the Pacific Daily News , a huge number of the cans that roll out of the Spam factory end up in Guam.
How many? Enough that Guam residents average 16 cans of Spam per person, per year. You can even get it at McDonald's : there are six in Guam, and they go through about cases of Spam a month. That's 57, cans a year! Because tinned luncheon meat — particularly Spam — has long been associated with the end of a dark time in their history: their occupation by Japanese forces during World War II.
Along with liberation, Allied forces brought Spam — and when you've been starving under the boot heel of an occupying army, Spam is life. Survivors of the liberation remember scrounging through the jungle for scraps to eat: "Food that even the pigs wouldn't eat, we would eat," said one.
So when Marines came and started giving out tins of Spam, it was a huge deal. The Allied landing was in July and fresh supplies didn't show up until December, but Spam?
Spam saw them through. Why is Spam A Spam tin was donated to the Smithsonian in , and in , it was featured on lottery tickets in Minnesota. Each year, 90 million cans of the Spam family of products are sold in the United States, which works out to three cans every second, according to Hormel. Hawaii is the state with the highest consumption per capita it's sold in restaurants and convenience stores there. The most popular way to eat it is in a sushi-type roll , called Spam musubi.
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Today, Korea is the world's second-largest consumer of Spam after only the United States , where it's seen as a luxury item: Spam is a popular gift for the Lunar New Year, packaged in gift boxes along with cooking oil and seasonings. Spam musubi. In the decades after WWI, as native Koreans and Japanese migrated to Hawaii, food culture in the islands became even more intertwined, combining the culinary preferences of natives and the Asian and Anglo diasporas.
Japanese immigrants to Hawaii are credited with inventing Spam musubi, a Hawaiian version of onigiri that binds a cooked slab of Spam to rice with a piece of nori. Touted for its portability, it's still widely available in Hawaiian convenience stores as an easy grab-and-go lunch or snack. Diner staple loco moco, a dish featuring rice topped with a hamburger patty, fried egg, and brown gravy often features Spam as an additional protein.
And the meat pops up in everything from fried rice to omelets to saimin the Hawaiian noodle soup dish. Today, Spam fervor in Hawaii has sustained a decade-old Spam festival in Waikiki, where chefs and Spam-lovers gather to appreciate and explore the lunchmeat's role in Hawaiian culture.
Earlier this spring, the 12th-annual Spam Jam saw more than 24, attendees converge to sample dishes like Spam lettuce wraps, Spam and corn chowder, Spam-and-basil on Sicilian-style pizza, and a dessert dubbed "Mom's Puerto Rican Spam flan. Like crazy," says festival co-founder Karen Winpenny, who has memories of the ingredient dating back to when she was eight or nine years old. According to Winpenny, the first edition of Spam Jam was devised as a way to get local Waikiki residents to intermingle with tourists and vice versa.
Something new. Most importantly, the event has emerged as a way to raise money and awareness for the Hawaii Food Bank. The Hawaii Food Bank's most-requested item is cans of Spam. The story found its way across the Pacific, with Winpenny bringing it up during our conversation: "I read an article: I guess New York's starting to do something with Spam, too. But Spam on upscale restaurant menus is not a recent phenomenon.
James Beard Award-winner Alan Wong has experimented with a housemade version dubbed "Spong" , which shows up in breakfast dishes at his Honolulu restaurant Pineapple Room.
His new spot, POT, offers a version of budae jjigae. And in , Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook of LA's Animal created a cult classic mash-up with their Spam and foie gras loco moco, re-imaging the Hawaiian dish with Carolina gold rice, hamburger patty, foie gras, and Spam straight from the can. The spam-and-foie loco moco, which Dotolo says was inspired by his curiosity toward Hawaiian food, soon became an icon: When Animal was profiled later that year in both the New York Times and The New Yorker , its use of Spam and foie in one dish became the emblem of the restaurant's " giddy, sophisticated-stoner sensibility.
Animal's Spam and foie gras loco moco. Thanks to California's foie gras ban, the dish is currently off the menu at Animal, but Dotolo says the dish was reflective of "who we are in Los Angeles. But Animal's take on the dish was bestowed with an air of "punk attitude" in the press, its mash-up of highbrow, lowbrow, and a surfer's appetite considered a new approach to fine dining.
Spam, photographed in By Olivia B. Get our History Newsletter. Put today's news in context and see highlights from the archives. Please enter a valid email address. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up.
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