The sweet and salty spam was so delicious with the soft, sticky rice and the crispy seaweed. I know my wrapping skills aren't nearly as good as Akina's, but I can see why this flavor combination is so popular!
Top tips from me:
1) Most grocery stores will carry the ingredients you need, but if it's a smaller store, head to a store like
Hana or
Rice Market to find quality sushi rice, furikake and sushi nori. While you're there, maybe see if you can find the mold (or
on Amazon).
2) Akina sent photos of her using low sodium Spam so I followed in her footsteps! Feel free to use the regular kind, though.
3) The Spam can works with a bit of saran wrap to help pull the rice out, but I imagine you can get a tighter sushi wrap and way more rice in there if you use a proper mold.
4) I recently ran out of sushi rice and couldn't get more in time, so I used a bunch of online advice to make my plain white rice more sticky. I added extra tablespoons of water to steam it longer, letting it sit on the stove on low for another 20 minutes, then added in about a tbsp of rice vinegar.
5) I definitely did not make enough rice though, which is why my musubi looks way thinner than the gorgeous photos on Abunai's social media. Make sure you make enough rice. In fact, make too much rice. You can never have enough.
6) Make sure you pan fry the Spam before adding the sauce! Get it nice and crispy, but not dry.
7) Give the sauce a good stir before adding it to the pan because the sugar didn't fully dissolve for me. Also make sure you get that garlic and ginger onto the Spam.
8) You'll like find sushi nori sheets that are too long, so just cut them in half. Nice and simple.
9) Wrap your musubi as tightly as possible, but don't get discouraged by it not looking perfect. It'll still taste amazing (I promise).
10) Don't forget the furikake on top. I did before I took photos, but added it shortly after, I swear.
Time:
This took me about an hour start to finish with my photo and video pausing. When making this for yourself for lunch, depending on your sushi-wrapping skills, it will likely take 30 minutes. This could easily be a meal for four, if each has four musubi.
Ingredients
1 can reduced sodium Spam — 4 cups sushi rice or white rice (see tip for how to make sticky) — 1 cup soy sauce — 1 cup granulated sugar — 1 tsp chili paste — 1 tsp oyster sauce — 1 tbsp sesame oil — 1 tbsp mirin, — 1 tbsp minced ginger — 1 tbsp minced garlic — 4 full-sized sushi nori sheets (8 when cut in half) — furikake
Instructions:
1. Take Spam out of can and cut into 8 even slices.
2. Meanwhile, cook your sushi rice. Once cooled down to room temperature, mold rice into musubi mold or spam can wrapped in saran wrap. Make sure the rice mold is several inches thick.
3. Combine soy sauce, sugar, chili paste, oyster sauce, sesame oil, mirin, minced garlic and ginger in a bowl to create Abunai sauce. Set aside to add to Spam slices later.
4. Pan fry Spam slices in skillet with a little oil, until golden brown on both side.
5. Once both sides are seared, add a splash of Abunai sauce (about 1 tbsp) on one side then flip to sear with the sauce for a few minutes. Repeat on the other side. 6. Remove spam from the pan and assemble your sushi-making station. Cut sushi nori sheets into the length of the spam slices.
7. Place spam on sushi nori sheet about 2 inches up from the bottom. Place rice mold on top.
8. Wrap the nori sheet around spam and rice mold as tightly as you can.
9. Cut Musubi in half. Sprinkle furikake on top and splash with extra sauce. Enjoy!
She wanted to share her culture and food with the DMV community and see what they think. So far, they love it! Akina noticed that when she sold poke as a special on the truck, it was always really popular, despite her offering a variety of Hawaiian food. The downtown crowd tends to prefer healthier, fast casual options, just like poke. So Abunai offering poke downtown made sense. But don't worry, the shop is still 
She may change the sauce or do the marinade slightly differently for the Spam or chicken. She changed her Abunai sauce during the pandemic slightly, and even though nobody else can tell, she continues to tweak her recipes. That's what makes her spam musubi so popular, which I begged to highlight here in the newsletter. It's one of the most popular menu items, and one of Akina's favorite as well. She says because it can be eaten as a snack or meal, the shop goes through a lot of Spam.
She says she's a very upfront, honest person, so if someone has an issue, she's happy to fix it, but if it's a lie, she's correct them. Some may not realize Akina is at the shop all the time from open to close, overseeing everything to make sure it's running smoothly, so she knows how situations play out. But after that snafu on social media, the community showed up and the shop was very busy. So busy that we had to delay any interview! Akina wasn't expecting the outpouring of support, and since Abunai was understaffed, things were crazy. A couple of other foodie influencers, like Hypefoodies, were kind enough to offer marketing services around the same time as well.
While it was exciting to get more loyal customers, the recent reopening of the city has been daunting. Abunai has seen busy times in the last two months, even before the city reopened in June, and the understaffing issue was seriously highlighted by that. Akina said they're all just trying their best everyday, and she cancelled some catering bookings to help focus on the shop. But if you're looking to support the shop and a local business owner, head over to grab lunch, try out this recipe, and enter to win the gift card to Abunai.
