Deviled Spam
Oct 03, 2025
One of my favorite noshes is a spread made from Underwood® deviled ham and cream cheese. It's pretty simple to make, and very tasty on crackers or toast.
So this morning I decided it would be nice to have some on hand for the weekend, but my cupboard was bare of the deviled ham! Not being willing to either give up, go to the store, or wait for the kitchen fairy to drop new supplies of the canned stuff, I decided to try and make my own.
Now we don't normally keep a large stock of plain ham on hand. In fact other than the occasional ham steak, intended as the entree of our main meal, or some pre-packaged sandwich slices for quick meals. What we do keep on hand - mostly for emergencies - is the much-maligned canned meat product, SPAM!
Now if you ask Hormel®, they'll tell you Spam is not a mystery meat at all. It contains only 6 ingredients: pork (including ham), salt, water, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite. Excepting only the sodium nitrite, all of these are actually common foods, and sodium nitrite is a common ingredient in meat products, produced by many reputable meat packers, to prevent botulism. So nothing mysterious.
I decided "what the heck, Spam is mostly (fatty) ham, and I don't have to add salt to the product", so I tried it. This is the result.
Suggested Equipment:
- Small blender (3-cup) or food processor
- Common kitchen measures and tools.
Ingredients:
| 1 | ea | Spam®, | 12 oz can |
| 1½ | tsp | Prepared Dijon mustard | |
| 1 | tsp | Distilled white vinegar | |
| ¾ | tsp | Worcestershire sauce | |
| ¼ | tsp | Hot sauce1, | Your favorite |
| ⅛ | tsp | Black pepper, | ground |
Directions:
- Remove the Spam from the packaging, and cut it up into cubes of about ½" to ¾" on the edge. Put the cubes into your blender or food processor, and pulse until you are happy with the resulting particle size.
- Measure the remaining ingredients into the blender or processor, and again pulse until everything is thoroughly mixed.
- Package and store the product in your refrigerator for about 2 hours before using. Keep unused product refrigerated.
If you can't consume the entire batch fairly quickly (3 days max), try freezing the remaining product for future use. For freezing, I try to apportion the unused spread in aliquots of about 3 to 4 oz.
If you don't feel there is enough fat already in the Spam, you can add up to 6 tablespoons of mayonnaise. Be advised, though, that mayonnaise doesn't freeze well. You would be better off not using it in the portion of the spread that you intend to freeze - you can always add it in after thawing.
This recipe yields about 13 oz. of product - not much more than the weight of the original Spam component.
Trials of this recipe included making the deviled ham/cream cheese spread that prompted creating the recipe. It worked very well, and taste tests of the basic product were unable to distinguish it from the commercial product.
Catagories: Pork, Spam, Ham, Spreads, Sandwiches, Snacks