Spam and Sauerkraut

[Ben]

Well, spam and sauerkraut works as a combination.

I was all set to have pot roast today. Every Christmas, my sister sends me a giant box of Omaha Steak stuff, which is surprisingly good. I've never had a bad product*. Irritatingly, 90% of the stuff comes as "do not thaw, cook from frozen", but around 10% requires thawing overnight in the fridge first. This stupid pot roast required thawing, and I only saw it an hour before I was gonna cook it, so I had to come up with a new lunch plan.

I have been on a sauerkraut and ham kick lately. Sauerkraut and ham on bread is a South German staple on Christmas Eve. I have been making it a few times since this last Christmas Eve, and figured, "Hey, since I already baked bread this morning for the pot roast, I'll do that instead". Only I don't have ham here. I've got a ton of spam though, so experimented. It's surprisingly good.

My folks would shake their heads if they were still alive, but rather than use the usual cooked sauerkraut recipe (which is kinda bland) from our region of Southern Germany, I used a generally Bavarian version. You cut a bunch of bacon into small slices, like for making beef boogaloo, and cook that in a frying pan. Keep all the bacon and grease in the pan. Drain sauerkraut really well (like press the juice out of it) and drop it in the pan with the bacon and grease, and let that grease really mix up with the kraut. Then add some thinly sliced apple, and a small amount of thinly sliced sweet onion. Now fry up the spam. Cut off a slice (or two) from the warm out of the oven bread and spread butter on it. Put a layer of spam on top. Put a layer of kraut on top. Eat as an open-faced sandwich. Yum!

I looked on the interwebz, and apparently "spam Reuben sandwiches" are a thing too.


* I crack up because in five years of sending me a variety box with like 8-10 items in it, she has never once actually included steak. From Omaha Steaks. 

[MillCreek]

The kraut sounds really good. I wonder about throwing in some caraway seed.

[Ben]

The kraut sounds really good. I wonder about throwing in some caraway seed.

I'm always 50/50 on the caraway seed. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I haven't used any for a good while. I have some here and will throw them into the next batch.

[JTHunter]

   Can't stand either one !!   

[K Frame]

First off, your roast...

You could do a water thaw and it would have been pretty much read to cook in an hour or so, depending on how big it was.

And yes, spam and sauerkraut does very much work.

As for caraway seeds in kraut? No thank you. Ruins it.

[Ben]

First off, your roast...

You could do a water thaw and it would have been pretty much read to cook in an hour or so, depending on how big it was.

I thought of that, since I do water thaws with a lot of stuff when I forget to take it out the night before, but their instructions seemed pretty explicit about a refrigerator thaw, so I figured better safe than sorry. I'll just make it next Sunday. 

[K Frame]

"but their instructions seemed pretty explicit about a refrigerator thaw"

My guess is that's from a safety point of view. They don't want someone flopping it on the counter and walking away for 12-15 hours while it thaws AND grows a nice colony of bacteria.

The only difference between defrosting in the refrigerator vs defrosting in cold water is speed. The meat doesn't know the difference.

[K Frame]

Thinking about this a little bit more... there may be a very slight difference...

A slower defrost in the fridge may allow the meat to retain slightly more moisture (or reabsorb moisture initially lost to cell damage caused by freezing).

But to be honest, I can't find anything on which is preferred or whether either one would be preferable from a moisture retention perspective.

Again, I think Omaha's primary reason for saying this is food safety driven.

[Ben]

Again, I think Omaha's primary reason for saying this is food safety driven.

That seems like the most probable Occam's Razor reason - lawyers.