SPAM and pineapple shortcut sandwich

I was recently scrolling through YouTube and found a SPAM sandwich video with a real clickbait-y title of “Gordon Ramsay Makes a Spam Sandwich?!?!” And I just had to watch.

In the video, instead of yelling at other chefs or making Idiot sandwiches, Ramsay is grilling on a beach in Hawaii, making a sandwich out of sliced SPAM and pineapple, and it got me thinking about what I would do with those two ingredients.

I decided to take a slightly different trajectory with my SPAM and pineapple sandwich, but I did end up using similar ingredients and flavors. I also leaned into a Hawaiian theme since it’s hard to avoid with the inclusion of pineapple. For my sandwich, I decided to focus more on ingredients that were easy to make or that you could possibly buy from the store.

My SPAM and pineapple sandwich has a savory ssamjang mayonnaise, seared SPAM and pineapple, topped with a miso-focused Japanese BBQ sauce and crispy fried onions inside of a homemade Hawaiian-style sweet sandwich bun. Sounds complicated, right? Well, some of it is and some of it isn’t.

First, as always, we need some buns.

I’ve shared this bun recipe before, and they’re fun to make because you basically swap out all the water for pineapple juice. I’m just an amateur bread baker and not a bread scientist, but before making these, you should be aware that substituting slightly acidic juice for the water will make some changes in the consistency of the bread. It works, though. I’ve just found that my resulting buns are a bit firmer, and they take longer to rise.

Besides the sugar in the pineapple juice, there’s a little bit of additional sugar in the buns, which also helps to give them a sweet result when fully baked. You’ve probably had Hawaiian rolls or slider buns before, and that’s what this recipe attempts to recreate.

For a SPAM and pineapple sandwich, you need Hawaiian buns. I don’t make the rules, I just write them down. If I weren’t baking my own buns, I would definitely use King’s Hawaiian brand sandwich or burger buns for this sandwich. They’re a good size (meaning not too large), and they have great flavor. They are soft but should still stand up to a couple of sauces and some seared pineapple and SPAM. I believe these should be pretty available across the United States; if you live in a foreign land, you might need to make a new plan, or just buy a soft bun that would typically be used for burgers.

Once the SPAM has been released from its metal prison, you can choose to slice it as thin or thick as you’d like, but for the sake of this sandwich, I went with about 1/4 inch thick pieces. Any thicker and it seems like the balance is off with the ratio of seared external meat and soft internal meat. Keep it around that thickness for the best results.

The easy thing about this sandwich is that you can cook the SPAM and the pineapple in the same pan for about the same length of time. Both items just need to be cooked until they start to brown just a little, or in the case of the SPAM, you want to make sure the entire flat surface is starting to get a darker color than the sides. That’s it. This is easy sandwiching.

A pineapple might be a little bit intimidating if you’ve never cut one, but it’s really simple. The top and the bottom need to be cut off. Neither of those parts are any good. Chuck ’em in the trash.

Then you need to be aware that there is a tough, inedible core inside the pineapple that also needs to be disposed of. I think you can buy pineapple corers, but it’s easy enough just to cut the pineapple in half and slice the core out.

After the core is removed, you can cut the pineapple into smaller pieces and slice off the exterior. This process should leave you with the ability to slice 1/4 inch thick small pieces that will work great on a sandwich.

If you don’t want to break down a whole pineapple or you’re not sure what you’re going to do with all the leftovers, just buy canned pineapple. It obviously won’t be as fresh, but it’s still really good and will add a great sweetness to the sandwich, which will work well with seared SPAM. Try to find the pineapple that’s stored in its own juice, and you should be all good.

You will want to remove the slices from the juice and maybe drain them a bit before searing if you hope to get much in the way of color. But otherwise, they should cook the same way as fresh pineapple.

Like most of the other ingredients in this SPAM and pineapple sandwich, I took the easy way out for the versions that I made, but if you wanted to go the hard route, you would fry your own crispy onion strings immediately before making the sandwich. These things do not have a long shelf life, so don’t try to make them the day before because they simply will not have any crunch left.

I chose the easy way for this component, and you probably should too unless you’re making a SPAM sandwich for the King of England or something. Don’t do that. Make him a crumpet or something.

There’s no hard way or easy way for this sauce, because it’s already very easy. It’s two ingredients mixed together.

This sandwich spread is Korean-focused, and it’s definitely not traditional to Hawaii, but it works well with SPAM, and I enjoyed it in this sandwich. It’s also one of the easiest ways to fully change a boring sandwich into something a bit more exciting and a bit more flavorful with just a couple of minutes of effort.

Buy some ssamjang at your local Asian market or online, and keep it in the fridge. Ssamjang is not that spicy, but it brings a lot of savoriness and umami to anything you spread it on. Mix it with mayonnaise and plus up your next sandwich.

My Japanese-style BBQ sauce recipe is easy. But buying your own sauce at the store is easier.

Banchan’s makes great sauces. They are expensive, don’t forget that, but they are really flavorful with lots of sweet, teriyaki flavors, and I tried a new one on this sandwich. This is their Miso sauce, which is very savory and just like the label says, it’s packed with umami.

The sweetness in a barbecue sauce like this works great with seared meat, and it even complements the sweetness in the pineapple very well. If you can’t find Bachan’s version of sauces, you can just use a teriyaki sauce or even a sweet BBQ sauce would be just fine in this application. All we’re trying to do here is bring out the sweetness in the sandwich to balance the savoriness of the SPAM.

I’m only sharing the Easy option as a recipe for this SPAM and pineapple sandwich. If you want a challenge and you want to make the hard version, all the recipes and ideas are in this blog post, you just need to find them and get to work.

Scroll through to see some photos and read my sometimes boring, sometimes enjoyable photo captions, and then the recipe just a bit further down the page.