Sorry for the delay.
Here we go... "
SPAM Grenades"!
I'll follow
mreheater72's excellent example, and start with the equipment:
I was intrigued by this recipe, thinking it would be a great "road menu" (MRE crackers and SPAM Singles are a staple of my travel kit), so I decided to use my "emergency" 1 L sized stainless steel dog water bowl, which is part of my standard car kit. I've used it for boiling water, but never for "cooking".
I also briefly considered using my Esbit or sterno stove, but wimped out and just used an electric range.
While reading
mreheater72's excellent how-to, I wondered about breaking up the cracker
inside the MRE package itself, before opening it.
Why?
Figured it would be
easier, and less equipment. Yeah, I'm
lazy when it comes to cooking.
Wasn't sure if it would work, and decided to do it the evening before, while watching TV.
It worked better than I had expected:
Again, based on
mreheater72's excellent advice, I used
both crackers, and just splashed some water in, mixed, then kept adding water and remixing until it looked like a very thick paste:
I did
not measure the water, just "winged" it.
Here's a closeup of the datestamps of the SPAM Single and the MRE Cracker:
Yes, the SPAM was trivially expired. There was no noticeable taste degradation, despite spending about a year or two in my car. I've got a few more left from that batch, and plan to keep at least one and try it a year past expiration.
I decided to just use
half of the Single:
Was planning to use a knife to cut it up, but SPAM is essentially finely shredded bits-o-meat, squished together, so a
spoon was more than sufficient:
Ok, let's add the cracker paste:
Mix 'em up, then form them:
SPAM was
very easy to mix with the crackers. I have very bad hands (three hand injuries when I was in the Reserves plus 25+ years of heavy keyboarding), so when I say "easy", I mean trivially easy.
The two patties of butter were a bit insufficient, and the Grenades were kind of an awkward shape, but, they cooked up easily and did
not "explode":
Closeup of the first bite:
Post Mortem:
Mistakes / areas-for-improvement:
- I should have used more butter/oil/whatever.
- I probably should have used the entire SPAM Single. That might have been why it did not explode (much lower meat to grain ratio).
- The bowl was a worthwhile experiment, and did work (clean up was a nuisance, mainly due to too little oil/etc), but next time I'm going to use a regular fry pan.
Eventually, I'll try it with at least one of Esbit or sterno.
Things that went right:
- Crushing in the package was simpler than doing it separately. The packaging showed no sign of damage - it's tough! (see pics of patties just before cooking - they're on the cracker package)
- Using SPAM made the final mixing stage much easier. Easy is good.
- Despite my goofs, they tasted pretty darn good.
I have more Singles, and plan to make another batch, soon.
Next batch will probably be with a SPAM "Lite" Single (yes, they exist!).
Stay tuned.
Crazy question/idea:
mreheater72 and
Treesuit: what do you think of crushing & mixing these, then reinserting into the mylar cracker pouch and trying "manifold cooking"? Maybe try it wrapped in Al foil in an oven, first, as a proof of concept?
Bring on more recipes
and commentaries, please!
?
! 
! It seems that TABASCO did not make the efforts to create some new recipes which were adjusted to current MRE menus that time 
.