Potted meat has a
poor reputation, and it’s pretty easy to see why. It’s basically highly processed, cheap meat,
with tons of preservatives, stuffed into a can.
One common ingredient in potted meat is “mechanically separated
chicken.” In case you were curious, the
things being separated here are bone and tissue, and this is done by pushing
pulverized bone and tissue through a sieve.
The result resembles a paste.
Potted meat also tends to have an extremely high salt content, the
better to help preserve it. Otherwise,
its nutritional value is fairly low.
On the plus side,
all the preservatives mean that potted meat does stay good for a long
time. Its long shelf life and
portability make it a good choice for emergency situations, camping, and soldiers’
rations. Plus, there’s no denying that
it’s very affordable for those on a budget.
A former coworker
of mine (Hi Scott) used to love potted meat, specifically Spam. He would heat it up for lunch by leaving it
on the windshield of our work van during sunny days. He further delighted in grossing folks out by
making a point of eating the clear gel that coated the outside of the Spam
itself.
Spam is, of
course, the best known of all the potted meats.
It was developed in 1937, and became especially popular as a result of
being part of soldiers’ rations, and later post World War 2 food
allotments. There was even a Spam-themed
radio program in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. And famous comedy troupe Monty Python
featured this product as the focus of one of their sketches, in a restaurant
that included Spam in every meal offering.
To round out my
potted meat experience, I decided to try four different kinds—Spam Classic,
Spam with bacon, Treet Original, and generic potted meat. As usual, I’ll go from worst to first.
Generic potted
meat’s ingredients include mechanically separated chicken, partially defatted
pork fatty tissue, salt, garlic powder, and natural flavors. Yum!
Its appearance was, well, a pinkish goo.
And it went downhill from there.
The taste was nasty, like eating a mouthful of salt. What little meat flavor I could detect
underneath all the salt was unpleasant.
Even though the tin was tiny, I only could choke down a mouthful or two.
Treet is the Spam
knockoff from Armour. Aside from
mechanically separated chicken and pork, seasoning, and salt, it also has corn
syrup, soy, and wheat. Its texture was
firmer than the generic potted meat, and its color was a reddish pink. Tastewise it was certainly better than the
generic potted meat, but it still wasn’t very good. I found it to be rather slimy. I didn’t finish the container.
Unlike the
previous two, Spam Classic’s ingredients don’t sound so gross. Pork shoulder with ham, salt, water, modified
potato starch, sugar, sodium nitrate. As
I mentioned, this is considered to be the Dom Perignon of potted meats, if you
will. It’s brought to us by Hormel. Anyway, it looked like generic potted meat,
its texture was like Treet’s, but its taste was like neither. While it was very salty, it did have a nice
flavor—pork/ham-ish, not shockingly. I
discovered that the saltiness was cut nicely when I put it on Wheat Thins. I finished the tin without problem, and I
would consider buying it again, on occasion.
I hear it’s good with scrambled eggs, so the next time I cook (which may
be years or even decades from now) maybe I’ll give that a shot.
It’s a cliché (at
least among omnivores) that bacon makes everything taste better. It’s true with Spam. While I liked the regular, the variety with
bacon was markedly improved—it had a nice smoky flavor. Again, I finished it with no problem, and
will probably purchase it again.
American-made
Spam is consumed around the world, but it’s most popular on Pacific Islands ,
Asia, and the U.K. The people of Guam, Saipan, the Marianas, and
Hawaii are
especially big fans. In Hawaii it’s sometimes
found on McDonald’s menus, even. In the U.K. it’s often
battered and fried.
(Perhaps a few
readers are wondering if I did eat the repulsive-sounding gel that lines the
Spam like my friend Scott did. Well, I
didn’t have the chance. Maybe they
changed the formula, or something, but my Spams didn’t have it. But, for the record, I probably would have
sampled it, just to be a completist.)
So, to sum up,
some types of potted meat are indeed revolting (or at least unpalatable) and
should only be eaten if they’re the only food available, and you’re huddling in
a basement hiding from zombie hordes or Terminators. But one kind, Spam, is actually okay. Eating it every day is probably a bad idea,
healthwise, but on occasion, to some palates, it makes for a decent, and
inexpensive meal.
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