Curator's Choice

Episode 53: SPAM Museum

• Ayla Anderson • Episode 53

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Ever wondered how a humble canned meat could become a cultural icon? Join us as we uncover the rich history and global legacy of Spam. We'll take you back to its origins in Austin, Minnesota, where Jay Hormel's quest for a fully cooked ham led to the creation of Spam 87 years ago. Discover how this innovative product became a vital food source for soldiers during World War II and evolved into a beloved household staple in the post-war era. Our journey will take us around the globe, highlighting Spam's immense popularity in South Korea, the Philippines, and Japan.

🐖 From Humble Origins to Global Culinary Icon 🥫
Get ready to be enthralled by the stories, traditions, and crazy recipes that surround Spam. We'll debunk some common misconceptions about Spam, delve into its 6 ingredient recipe, and explore how its formulation has evolved over the years. From unique culinary creations like Spam Musubi to the vibrant Spam Jam celebration in Hawaii, this episode is packed with delicious inspiration. Whether you're a longtime fan or new to the Spam phenomenon, you'll leave with a newfound appreciation and perhaps even a few ideas for your next meal.

🧀  SPAM Species  🧄
Classic Spam
Spam Lite
Spam Less Sodium
Spam with Real Hormel Bacon
Spam Hickory Smoke
Spam Hot & Spicy
Spam Jalapeño
Spam Black Pepper
Spam Teriyaki
Spam Oven Roasted Turkey
Spam Garlic
Spam Tocino
Spam Portuguese Sausage
Spam Chorizo
Spam Cheese
Spam Single Classic
Spam Single Lite
Spam Single Hickory Smoke
Spam Single Hot & Spicy 
Spam Spread
Spam Limited Edition Pumpkin Spice

🔗 Episode Links

SPAM Museum: https://www.spam.com/museum

Spam Recipies: https://tinyurl.com/yh37capm


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Curator's Choice - A podcast for history nerds and museum lovers

Ayla Sparks:

Hi, I'm Ayla Sparks and this is Curator's Choice, a podcast for history nerds and museum lovers. From ancient relics to modern marvels, each episode of this show features a new museum and a curator's choice of some amazing artifacts housed there. These guardians of history will share insights, anecdotes and the often untold stories that breathe life into the artifacts they protect. Thanks for tuning in to this Mighty Oak Media production and the often untold stories that breathe life into the artifacts they protect. Thanks for tuning in to this Mighty Oak Media production and enjoy the show. I'm so excited about spam. It is my grandma's favorite thing. However, I thought a spam museum was in Hawaii.

Savile Lord:

Well, you know what that is such a good question? Because we get that all the time. Here we have two different types of people. One that come in and say, do you know that Hawaiians love spam? And we're like, yeah, we do. And then we have the other group who's like wait, why is the museum here in Austin, minnesota, and not in Hawaii? And because the Hawaiians absolutely adore spam. And it's simply because we're the home of Hormel Foods. Hormel Foods started in Austin, minnesota, 133 years ago, and we are the ones who created Spam almost 87 years ago, and so we wanted it just needed to be here, because this is where it was born and raised. That makes a lot of sense now. Yes, the birthplace of the whole idea of taking a meat and making a canned meat that was totally portable and able to be eaten by vast amounts of people across the world.

Ayla Sparks:

So, speaking of that birth of Spam, why was Spam developed in the first place? I feel like it was made to hit a certain need that we needed in the country at the time.

Savile Lord:

Well, you are absolutely right, but you would have to actually go back about 10 years. 10 years prior there was a product that went out onto the market. The founder of the company, george Hormel, had a son whose name was Jay, and Jay was this amazing innovator. He had all of these really creative ideas. He just really wanted to make people's lives easier with the products that he created, and so he spent a number of years following World War I developing a fully cooked ham. It was supposed to literally.

Savile Lord:

The idea behind it was he wanted to save women time in the kitchen because they were spending.

Savile Lord:

You know, when you were cooking a 10-pound ham from raw, it would take massive amounts of time eight, nine hours but if you had a fully cooked ham, it would take an hour and a half to two hours to just reheat it and you were saving so much time from that woman being really married to the kitchen where she could go out and do other things and just have to reheat this ham.

Savile Lord:

So he took several years figuring out the process of how to fully cook it in its can and then took that, developed it down and shrank it to fit a spam can. So it was definitely fitting a need at the time. It was developed in 19,. It went live in 1937, and truly fit a need. If you look at a can of spam, it actually is the size of a slice of bread. And that was very, very purposeful, because the idea was you cut the Spam up, you would serve your family of four or five, you would throw away the can because you wouldn't have the refrigeration for leftovers and you could serve it on a slice of bread and feed your whole family.

Ayla Sparks:

What catapulted Spam to being as popular as it became? Because that sounds like a great consumer product for women who are looking. But I feel like it probably had an awakening of spam the spam awakening.

Savile Lord:

Shortly after it came out, in 1937, we hit World War II, and during World War II, spam is the meat of many uses. It can be served in breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. The variety of different ways that you can make spam has absolutely no limits. So you take that, with it being a fully cooked protein that is so important to the soldiers that are serving and helping to fight World War II, that brought it home for a lot of people A that high protein level and B the availability of not having to worry about it being cooked. If you needed to, you could open up the can and eat it straight out of the can. Otherwise you could fry it up, so you had different uses and then you could have it for that breakfast, you could have it for that lunch, you could have it for dinner. There were so many different ways you could serve it. It really made it very versatile.

Ayla Sparks:

Was the US government purchasing spam in mass quantities to send to troops?

Savile Lord:

Yes, by the time about 1945, about 90 percent of what Hormel Foods was making, including spam, was going over for the war effort. Canned foods in general were a number of those items. But so yeah, absolutely that was a, that was a thing.

Ayla Sparks:

Well, so we know that it was really important when we were in kind of a dire situation with the World War. What made spam continue to be popular? Because even today it is still very popular in some places because even today, it is still very popular in some places.

Savile Lord:

Well, it is. That's. The huge thing is that right now, spam is sold in over 47 different countries all over the world. We have such huge spam bases in South Korea, for example, in the Philippines is another one, in Okinawa, japan, another huge just people who absolutely adore Spam, and so it is just grown. So you end World War II, people come home and they have this familiarity with this product and so they start making it.

Savile Lord:

And again, that versatility of the different ways that you can make it. You could make it for breakfast with Spam and eggs. You could make it for lunch in a casserole with a you know, mac and cheese and spam. You could make it for dinner as your main meal and then, as it's grown internationally, you see how they've developed all of these other ways that you can have it, for example, in South Korea. South Korea has something called budigije, which is also called army stew, and it became very popular following the Korean War, where there was a lot of spam that was left over by the US troops and made available to the Koreans to eat, and it was literally that protein that you needed. So you would have a family get together and your mother would bring one ingredient, your father would bring another ingredient, your aunt would bring a third ingredient, everybody would bring stuff together to make this budigije stew and there would always be spam.

Savile Lord:

Now, if you take it to the side and you think about okay, what about for Hawaii? Hawaii, if you think about island nations in general, island nations don't have a huge amount of landmass, so they don't have that landmass to have that hog farm, to have those pig farms, but they still need their protein. They get a lot of that from fish from around there in their waterways, but to have a meat that they can rely upon, that is that high protein that's not going to bankrupt them for having to eat. It's so important. If you're buying a pound of beef in, for example, hawaii, it is extremely expensive. You're talking $8, $10 a pound, whereas having something like Spam much more economical but still that high protein that people love. The Hawaiians call it Hawaiian steak. They just have this love affair with it. That's continued to grow over the years. But so you see, to finish up the answer to your question and I've gone a couple different directions with it, but it's just this food that people have come to love because they have a relationship with it, and they've for example, your grandmother has a story about spam. No other food that I've ever come across do people have that emotional attachment to, and that's what makes spam so special, is I have.

Savile Lord:

We have here in Austin, minnesota, a town of 24,000 people. We have 100,000 visitors come every year and they come to tell us their story about why spam means something to them. And to be able to tell those stories and to listen and hear people tell us their stories is such an honor because it truly means something to who they are as people and who they've become as people, because they've learned and heard these stories about spam over the years and then they've tried it and they've loved it. We had one of my spambassadors who's driving her granddaughter home the other day and her granddaughter turned to her and goes you know, I just love spam. She's six years old and just and it's something about the product that just brings a nostalgia back home. It's so simple Most people don't understand. There are only six ingredients in classic spam Six ingredients and that has made it just such a remarkable piece of the story of Americana. It just continues to blossom that love.

Ayla Sparks:

So why do you think and it might not be very prevalent, I know that it was for me when I was growing up, but it was like this idea that spam is not healthy anymore? It's considered something that you know you have on occasion and it was good back then when you didn't have a lot of options, but it's not healthy. I don't think that that's necessarily true, but how would you answer the question of someone saying is it actually healthy to eat spam?

Savile Lord:

We're not encouraging everyone to eat the entire can.

Ayla Sparks:

Moderation spam.

Savile Lord:

We're not encouraging everyone to eat the entire can. We limit moderation as much as people want to. We say you know absolutely limitations and that's what you'll find in any can. Meat. Is that? It's all about how you prepare it and the ingredients in it. There are just six of them for the classic spam. Obviously, when we get we have 11 varieties, so when you get into some of those other varieties you do get a couple more ingredients into it, but it's all about the moderation and to enjoy what you have, because it is just one of those delectable pieces. Sometimes you just need that the tasty ham that Spam is.

Ayla Sparks:

And it's high protein? Yes, easy. What are the six ingredients? Obviously ham, pig, so it's pork, shoulder and ham, so it's pork shoulder and ham.

Savile Lord:

So it's two different types of the cut of the pig. One is the pork shoulder was very important during the Depression, so it was a piece of the pig that you couldn't get a direct cut off. You weren't getting a slice of bacon off of it, you weren't getting a pork chop. You weren't getting a slice of ham. But it was very important meat. So they knew they could grind that portion up. Then they took the rear of the hog. That gave the pig a little bit more of a ham flavor and the combination of those two just made it absolutely perfect.

Ayla Sparks:

They add then sugar, water and potato starch, sodium nitrite and that's it For someone who might not know what is sodium nitrite, If you've ever eaten a hot dog in your entire life.

Savile Lord:

You would know sodium nitrite gives pepperoni, salami, any of those cured meats. It gives it that pink color and it gives it that shelf life.

Ayla Sparks:

Well. So I have had a lot of that in my life. I'm surprised I'm not turning pink myself. So very simple ingredients. Interesting that it's two different portions of the pig, which also as kind of a side note. It just blows my mind that one animal can taste so different depending on the cut. I don't know if that's common, because I feel like even with chicken, dark meat, light meat kind of tastes similar with a cow. I mean, you know a steak similar to kind of hamburger, in my opinion at least. But pig is vastly different flavors 100%.

Savile Lord:

So we've learned a lot about that over the years. And I will add the cool addition to spam was that potato starch. That happened in the early 2000s. So if any of your listeners remember a can from pre-2000, you'll remember that it had a little gelatin on the top. And when you opened up the can there was a little gelatin on top. Well, what is that gelatin? Well, spam is fully cooked. So anytime you cook a meat in an enclosed can it has juices and when those juices cool it actually would form that little layer. People didn't love that so we learned a lesson. We learned a thing or two. So early 2000s we ended up adding potato starch so that would reabsorb that fat and keep the meat nice and juicy without having the gelatin on top?

Ayla Sparks:

How do you go about cooking in the can? Is it just kind of like a pressure cooker? Does it go through a heating process Like what is happening in the spam factories?

Savile Lord:

There are two different types of ways that it is cooked. The majority of the spam is cooked in a six-story high-pressure cooker. There are two factories here in the United States that cook spam. 90% of it is cooked here in Austin, Minnesota, Then about 10% of it is cooked down in Dubuque, Iowa, and so it is a six-story cooker that literally cooks it with water. The second one. There's also what's called a retort cooker and that cooks the Spam with steam 90% comes from a single location, is cooked in a single location.

Ayla Sparks:

That's crazy.

Savile Lord:

Yes, we have four or five lines actually of Spam and they eat adding lines because we keep producing more and more Spam because there's so much demand for it. Demand has not slowed down. We are on, I believe, year seven of year over year sales increases for spam. It's just one of those products that just it has a life of its own and it continues to really really be impressive in its sales category because people are getting much more comfortable with it and much more used to it and just really seem to love it.

Ayla Sparks:

This is crazy. I had just obviously incorrectly assumed that it was at least staying steady, maybe going down, because I don't see very many people eating spam. But also, I guess maybe I'm just surrounding myself with these spam haters. That's incredible that it has been increasing every year.

Savile Lord:

It is absolutely incredible and we in fact just finished an exhibit here at the museum on some of our spam fans, because you know, we have true aficionados who try to make spam in every possible way you can, every possible way you can, and their connection with it is like their purpose is to represent the brand and to go out and show the world how great spam is because they love it so much. So we have a little army of people who are out there just that, that, just they love their spam. And you get into different parts of the United States especially, we have different varieties for different consumers. So, for example, there's a teriyaki version and the teriyaki version is very popular amongst our Asian population. Then we have a jalapeno version that's very popular down in the Texas, mississippi, alabama area. So hickory smoke, tennessee, like you, got to love it. So we really try to make sure that there's spams depending on what your taste buds are and what you like.

Ayla Sparks:

So obviously spam is very important, but why a museum? What does the world need to know about spam?

Savile Lord:

Why not? No, because I mean, having a food museum is not exactly the norm. We have this space where we're able to tell the story of spam and talk about that international influence, talk about how spam has grown over the past 86 years, and it's a destination for people to come. Because there are all these people I've had. I have to tell you my story about my Hawaiian couple. It was probably about two years ago and we had opened at 10 am, doors open.

Savile Lord:

These two people come in. They're taking pictures left and right. You know getting people in the pictures getting we have spam ambassadors, so those are our ambassadors of the spam brand. So the spam ambassadors were taking some photos of them and they were so excited they're telling us about how they were from Hawaii. Two minutes later, another couple comes in and they said by the way, you know, there's a Honda Accord out on the street. Is anybody in here? Is that their car? And the gentleman yeah, that's my vehicle and he goes. Well, you've left your driver's side door open. And he did that because he was so excited to come to the museum. He like jumped out of the car, ran into the museum with his wife and they were like on fire. So, and that's just so, that's why we have a spam museum, because people need a place to come to talk about their love of spam.

Ayla Sparks:

What can people expect whenever they come into the museum?

Savile Lord:

So it is one of the. We call it one of the happiest places on earth, simply because nobody who comes to this fan museum is ever disappointed or sad, because they've come here on purpose and sometimes they take major detours on road trips to make it here. When they come here, we have 14,000 square feet of square meat, so that is our little punchline. And you come in and it's a very interactive museum, so it's meant to be. We ask that you please don't eat the exhibits, but you can touch them. Lots of photo opportunities, lots of interactive screens, lots of things to see, and we walk people through not just the history of Hormel Foods so they can learn how spam came about.

Savile Lord:

But then we talk about the military influence of spam. We hit the international influence of spam. We have an entire play area for kids. Minnesota is a very big state, so if you're driving through here with little ones, it's very important to get those kids out of the car and give them a chance to run around a little bit. And then we just have some games. We have recipe boards, we have different ways to interact with the brand that are super fun. It is a museum that is meant to be touched Touched not eaten.

Ayla Sparks:

I'm wondering then. So what are some of the artifacts that you guys have at a spam museum? The first ever spam can on a shrine?

Savile Lord:

Yes, we do have an entire collection of cans that date back to the 1930s so that people can see all the different ways that you've opened Spam over the years, because that's one of the can itself has not changed the shape, the size of it, the label has a little bit depending on the time period, but how it's opened has changed five times, and so that's been important piece to kind of showcase to our visitors. One piece that we have is a fully restored 1945 Wiley's MB Jeep. Now why do you have a Jeep in a spam museum? Well, this goes back to part of our military section showcasing the importance of the military during the war, and it was given to us by a spam fan. Someone who had this Jeep didn't want it to go to a military museum, didn't want it to go to a car museum, but had a deep relationship with spam and they wanted to share that with us. So they donated this Jeep to us.

Savile Lord:

Then some of the other things that we have is a full can. So there are different ways that you've been able to serve Spam. Obviously, everybody knows the small can, the 12 ounce, but you're also able to see the seven ounce can, which is what's served in Asia. And then you're also able to see our larger cans that were originally what was produced for the army, and they are more like loaves of bread. That's about the size that they are, and that was a better way to ship off spam, simply because your individual cans when you're feeding a whole platoon is too small, so we were able to make it in larger sizes.

Ayla Sparks:

Do we know anything speaking more of like the artwork that's on the spam? Can do we know anything about the people who might've designed it or how the design has changed over the years?

Savile Lord:

Besides how you open it.

Savile Lord:

So in 1941, it was actually a black and white label, simply because there was a ration on ink during that time, so we made sure that we adhered to that.

Savile Lord:

The font is what has changed the most in Spam, so the coloring has always stayed classic blue and yellow. And I should tell you how Spam got its name at some point, so we'll jump off to that in a second. But it literally we started with a can that you would actually twist open with a key. You can see that today in some kind of some corned beef cans. It then moved to a side pull can, so you would actually pull a little loop on the side of the can and pull it open that way. Then back in the early mid 80s we switched to like a Coca-Cola single tab, pop top. That one wasn't having great success with the leverage portion of the can, so we changed it in the early 90s to a two-finger pull that is on a corner, thereby creating much better leverage and helping people who might have some arthritis in their hands being able to much easier open that can.

Ayla Sparks:

So let's talk about spam and its name. So I was looking online and it seems like there was kind of a. There's a bit of a mystery behind it. What's the story of Spam Name?

Savile Lord:

There is a small bit of mystery. So Jay, who we talked about earlier, had a product that he wanted to put out on the market. It had been out on the market previously under the name of Spiced Ham. However, he was going against a bunch of competition. There were about four or five other products out on the market at that time with similar names, similar types. So he really, in that innovative, creative mind that he had, he wanted to have a name for this product that would truly stick out.

Savile Lord:

So in 1936, during a New Year's Eve party that he hosted, he offered $100 to whomever could come up with the name for this new product. And apparently it did take a little while. A couple of drinks had to be passed before people started to truly get creative, but they put their names into this hat and at the end of the evening he pulled out the names and a gentleman by the name of Kenneth Dagnow he was an actor in Hollywood came up with the name Spam, the S-P from spiced and the A-M from ham. And during that time period that was not uncommon to have a name like Spam, because names of that time period were very short and punchy, so that was very common for the foods that were being produced during that time period. So Spam just fit in with the other products of that time and it worked out great.

Ayla Sparks:

It did. It fits perfectly on that little square, can? Yes, it does 100%. So what is the best way, in your opinion, to enjoy Spam?

Savile Lord:

Now you guys have to understand for your listeners. I eat Spam every day, every day, because we have our Spamples that we serve around the museum. We just do, and we serve them on little pretzels. So people just pick up the pretzel, eat the spam bowl and then have the pretzel, and we try to serve as many different varieties throughout the day as we can, and so I always get some.

Savile Lord:

But one of the ways I love to make spam and this is a perfect dish for coming into summer is a spam salad. You just take a little bit of bow tie pasta, cook that up. You then take some fresh onions, some fresh green pepper and a little bit of fresh corn. You have that on the side. Take a little bit of honey mustard, a little bit of white wine vinegar, just whisk that up. Then obviously, you have your spam. I love to use the jalapeno spam for this. You can use the hickory smoke None them, all of them are just fine and you dice that up, cook it, have a nice hot spam, mix everything together, pour in a little bit of cheese, oh, and it's perfect. You can have it chilled for your summer barbecue or you can have it warm for a summer night's dinner. Like you can do it either way, it's just, it's just a very, very good little dish versatile dish.

Ayla Sparks:

My my favorite definitely has to be the way that my grandma always made it for me. Of course, she would fry the spam in little cubes on a skillet and then mix it in with my blue box macaroni and cheese. Now, that's how my husband makes it for me.

Savile Lord:

Yes, and we actually have musabi. I don't know if you all have heard of the musabi, but musabi is one of the most popular ways they eat it in Hawaii. So Hawaiians take Spam. Do you know how the Hawaiians love sushi? In general, you take Spam. It kind of looks like sushi, but what they do is they take the rice.

Savile Lord:

The Spam can is actually perfect for making this. You just put a little piece of plastic inside, you pack in a little bit of rice, you pack in a slice of spam maybe the teriyaki spam, maybe one of the others and then you wrap it in a little nori, which is seaweed, and you have that warm and it is delicious. So in Hawaii they actually have that in their convenience store. So instead of going in and grabbing a rolling hot dog off one of those belts, they have heated refrigerators where you can grab that Spam and take that instead. They'll sell 200,000 to 300,000 Spam Musubi every day.

Savile Lord:

In Hawaii Kids have that for their to-go high-go high protein snack during soccer games. So you'll not just get your little slice of orange, you'll get that and a musubi to pick yourself up to get ready for game number two out of your three set games for the day. It's amazing how they continue to utilize it in this really friendly way. That makes it so because it's truly portable, it's fully cooked and you get it and you go, and that's the cool thing about Spam. So we had one of our Spam ambassadors actually make some for a meeting yesterday morning. It's just, it's this great little high-protein snack that everybody can enjoy. So I would encourage some of your listeners to do potentially a musubi date night and everybody just make a little bit of musubi. You just need a little bit of musubi. You just need a little bit of sticky rice, and a spam can is the perfect container for it because it's just that size. You just pack in a little bit of rice, you put that slice of spam on top.

Savile Lord:

You use a little bit of plastic to pull it out and then you wrap it in that nori.

Ayla Sparks:

I feel like I'm going to have to get a spam cookbook and just try all these different types of spam recipes.

Savile Lord:

We just actually had Spam Jam in Hawaii this past weekend. So Spam Jam and that's where they showcase all of the new ways to make spam it is a one-day celebration celebrating spam as a product and it didn't have anything to do with formal foods. It was created by a. It was started actually as a thank you lunch to all the resort workers and they always would serve spam at it, and then it's grown over the past 20 years to be this full day event that has. You know, they have bands, they have spam making contests, so all the different restaurants on the islands showcase the different ways they make spam.

Savile Lord:

You know, in different parts of the world. It has a mind of its own and really the influence is incredible. To add to that, just quickly, in South Korea they have a gift box that is spam. It is 12 cans of spam is one version. Another version is about nine cans of spam and two bottles of olive oil that comes specifically from Spain and they'll put it in this really pretty box and they'll give that out at their Lunar New Year. They'll give that out at their Hawaiian I'm sorry, their Thanksgiving and it's a show of respect because it's actually considered a lucrative gift In that country there are 10, 15 other knockoffs of people who want to be spam. So if you can afford the spam, that means you're doing really, really well, and so it's considered an exquisite gift to be able to receive.

Ayla Sparks:

I'm just imagining, like a dowry situation where you just end up getting spam.

Savile Lord:

Would, you like three cows, or would you like buy stock and spam?

Ayla Sparks:

I'm assuming there has to be some pretty incredible events that you guys do at the museum itself.

Savile Lord:

Yes, we just hosted a wine event, actually last night, where we hosted five different wines and then we did an appetizer with each one. Now, for this one, it was a different Hormel product for each appetizer, but we've done ones that are specifically spam and for Spam Musubi Day coming up in August. There is actually a Spam Musubi Day in August, and so we'll be doing a class on how to teach everybody how to make Spam Musubi.

Ayla Sparks:

That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing spam with us.

Savile Lord:

Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you for asking. I mean, when I grew up, I had no idea I'd be running a spam museum in Autzen, Minnesota, and I couldn't ask for a more fun job.

Ayla Sparks:

Thank you so much for tuning in and supporting Curator's Choice, a Mighty Oak Media production. If you enjoyed the show, please consider subscribing and rating the show on Apple Podcasts, spotify, youtube or wherever you get your podcasts YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. If you love a museum and would like to hear it featured in an episode, shoot me a message at curatorschoicepodcast at gmailcom. I'll do my best to reach out and see if I can get them to be on the show. You can also view articles, artifacts and more by following us on Facebook and Instagram. Thanks for listening to Curator's Choice, a podcast for history nerds and museum lovers.