Hi there, friends!

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I love to cook. Being in the kitchen is something that I truly enjoy, and I’m actually not that bad at it- toot toot. I’ve been sharing my creations on the ‘Gram and usually I have a recipe I’ve followed- or used as a guideline- but lately I’ve been doing a lot more off the cuff cooking and, well, people wanted to know the recipes. So, here I am, pretending I’m a food blogger.

Here’s what you can expect from the recipes here on this blog:

They will be delicious
They won’t have 1,546 ingredients and 25 steps (aka something my husband would choose)
I try to be adventurous, but using ingredients you can easily find
Time conscious
I won’t spend half the page telling you a story about the exact moment this recipe came to be

So without further ado……

Iniki-Inspired Spam Sliders

I was watching Pioneer Woman, my absolute favorite cooking show, and in the episode she’d done an around the world trip with food. Makes sense, we can’t travel. So why not visit other places with food! Long ago, we dubbed Wednesday’s “Worldly Wednesday” on our meal plan, which really just meant we try to do something inspired by another location.

Michael and I thought it would be kinda cool to expand upon this concept and have each family member choose a country or continent and make a whole day out of it. (Note: the only reason this is do-able is because Michael is off Wednesday, otherwise hell to the nah)

Anyway, this week we decided to do a tour of the U.S. with food. Michael chose Hawaii for lunch, no surprise as he’s been talking about Spam for a while now. I remembered an episode of DDD in Hawaii where they did a Spam burger…. so without a recipe to guide me, I rolled with the idea.

And so the Iniki-inspired spam slider was born.

It’s wonderfully weird and equally as delicious. Here’s the recipe:

For the sliders:

6 King’s Hawaiin rolls- the mini sweet kind

! can Spam, diced

1 lb ground beef- we used 93/7

1 tbsp olive oil

For the slaw:

1/2 head Napa Cabbage, chopped into ribbons

3 carrots, shredded

2 green onions, chopped

1/2 cup-ish of Makato Ginger Dressing

For the sweet/spicy aioli:

1/2 cup mayo

1 tsp honey

1/2-1 tbsp sriracha (depending on how spicy you like things)

Instructions:

Pre-heat oven to 350.
Heat the olive oil in an oven-safe pan or cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add diced spam and cook until golden-brown. Remove from pan, set to side to cool slightly.
Mix slaw veggies together in a medium-large bowl (with a lid to have it ready to put away after- pro-tip.) Add the ginger dressing and stir together, use more or less dressing to taste.
Mix all mayo ingredients together and set aside.
Place ground beef into the bowl with the Spam and mix it all together. You can hand-form patties, but I actually used a little biscuit cutter to cut out the patties so they would fit on the little Hawaiin rolls. This should make about 6 patties.
Heat pan that you cooked the Spam in (another pro-tip, don’t dirty another dish!) with a little olive oil, if needed. Place patties in pan and brown on both sides, about 5 minutes per side. Toss in the oven and cook until desired done-ness- we did about 10-ish minutes until they were at about 155 internal temperature. Remove from oven and set aside.
To assemble the sliders, cut the rolls in half and spread mayo on the bottom bun. Set patty on top of mayo, then top with slaw (unless it’s for your kid then skip the slaw- my 14 month old LOVED the slaw though, see below)
BOOM. Eat and enjoy!

If you’re a “I want a photo of the steps” kinda person, peep those below: