It's 4th of July weekend, and what's more American than potted meat? No? Not what you had in mind? Well, it's too late, I already bought the SPAM. Down the rabbit hole we go!
Today's recipe is called a SPAM Shady, created by Kim Wilcox at It's All So Yummy Cafe. So, if you're too lazy to whip one of these up, you can always hop on a flight to Knoxville to try one!
I found the recipe in The Ultimate SPAM Cookbook, and the SPAM Shady was by far the weirdest recipe in the book. Followed by the SPAM Ramen Burger. No, I'm not kidding. The ingredients are pretty simple:
2 slices of sourdough
6 slices of provolone cheese
1-1/2 cups of spaghetti, cooked with red sauce
1/2 can of SPAM Garlic (which I didn't find - but I did find SPAM Hickory Smoke and SPAM Bacon flavors - you learn something new every day)
Crushed red pepper
Parmesan cheese
This recipe starts with a griddle, so I'm already mad about it. No one wants to clean the griddle, not even for pancakes. And especially not for some Frankenstein SPAM-spaghetti sandwich. While the griddle heated up, I cooked my spaghetti noodles and poured jarred marinara sauce over them. And made some Alfredo noodles for my daughter who very suddenly became interested in my cooking once noodles were involved. #relatable
Then, I chopped and fried little SPAM cubes until they were crispy. This is the point where the dogs also became interested in my cooking. They were quite excited by whatever property SPAM has that makes it try to jump out of the pan when you stir it. I unsuccessfully tried to lure them away with cold spaghetti noodles.
Once the SPAM crunchies and the spaghetti were ready, I slathered the bread with butter, slammed it on the griddle, and topped it with the cheese. I only used 3 slices instead of the recommended 6 because I wasn't sure I wanted to waste good cheese on a VERY questionable sandwich. Also, because I forgot. Moving on!
Once the cheese started to melt and the bread started to turn golden brown, I topped the cheesy bread with the spaghetti and SPAM. Today I learned that there is no good way to get spaghetti to stay in a sandwich, so I just loaded up the bread, used a giant spatula to flip it onto the other slice of bread, and hoped for the best. I also made a backup sandwich in case the spaghetti-wich was gross.
Once the sandwich was assembled, I cut it in half so my unsuspecting husband could share it with me, and I hit it with some parmesan cheese. The kind out of the shaker bottle - don't judge me.
Once he found out I wasn't making something gelatin-related again, the husband was unreasonably excited about this recipe. That being said, I've also seen him put fettuccine alfredo in a tortilla and eat it for breakfast, so I wasn't surprised.
Once I dug into it, it tasted kind of like a chicken parmesan sandwich with bacon crunchies throughout. Not bad! The husband ate his half of the sandwich and went back for the rest of mine. My daughter wasn't pleased I interrupted her Minecraft to make her taste it - if you're a parent, you can probably hear this photo. She gave me a reluctant thumbs up after trying just the bread.
Final Rating: Not nearly as shady as I thought it would be! Probably would make again, as long as someone else cleans the griddle.
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