Chef Thomas
A Proper Ploughman's Board
A board of good cheddar, thick ham, proper pickle, hard-boiled eggs, and crusty bread. Not cooking so much as assembling with conviction, and one of the finest lunches the English kitchen has ever produced.
Culinary Explorer
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Spam Fritters
Created by Chef Thomas
Slices of Spam in cold beer batter, fried to a deep golden crunch, the kind of food that has no business being as good as it is, served with vinegar and eaten while still too hot to hold.
Appetizers & Snacks
British
Comfort Food
Budget Friendly
15 min
Active Time
15 min cook•30 min total
Yield4 servings
The smell of hot oil and batter is a particular kind of time travel. It takes you back to chip shops with tiled walls and fluorescent lights, to Friday evenings when the queue went out the door, to vinegar-soaked paper parcels eaten on the walk home. Spam fritters were there, behind the glass, golden and anonymous alongside the fish and the sausages. Nobody ordered them to be clever. They ordered them because they were good.
Spam is a tin of cooked pork and salt. That's all it is. It arrived during the war when fresh meat was rationed and fish was hard to come by, and chip shops did what chip shops have always done: they battered it and fried it and put it on the counter for sixpence. The clever part is the batter. A cold beer batter, mixed quickly and left alone, that puffs and crisps in hot oil into something properly shattering. The Spam inside goes soft and salty and savoury, a contrast to the crunch that catches you off guard if you haven't had one in years.
I won't pretend this is health food. I won't apologise for it either. There are evenings, dark ones, rainy ones, the kind where the windows are fogged and you can't be bothered with ambition, when what you want is something fried and salty and eaten standing up in the kitchen with your fingers. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract, and sometimes the conversation is short and to the point. We're only making dinner.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
Spam
Quantity
1 tin (340g)
cut into 8 slices, about 1cm thick
plain flour
Quantity
150g, plus extra for dusting
baking powder
Quantity
1 teaspoon
fine sea salt
Quantity
pinch
white pepper
Quantity
pinch
cold beer
Quantity
200ml
vegetable or sunflower oil
Quantity
for deep frying
malt vinegar (optional)
Quantity
to serve
lemon wedges (optional)
Quantity
to serve
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Spamcut into 8 slices, about 1cm thick | 1 tin (340g) |
| plain flour | 150g, plus extra for dusting |
| baking powder | 1 teaspoon |
| fine sea salt | pinch |
| white pepper | pinch |
| cold beer | 200ml |
| vegetable or sunflower oil | for deep frying |
| malt vinegar (optional) | to serve |
| lemon wedges (optional) | to serve |
Equipment Needed
- •Deep, heavy-bottomed saucepan or deep-fat fryer
- •Slotted spoon or spider
- •Wire cooling rack set over a baking tray
- •Kitchen thermometer (optional)
Instructions
- 1
Prepare the Spam
Open the tin and turn the Spam out onto a board. Cut it into eight slices, roughly a centimetre thick. Pat each slice dry with kitchen paper. This matters. Any moisture on the surface will stop the batter from gripping. Dust each slice lightly in plain flour, shake off the excess, and set them aside on a plate.
Cold Spam slices hold their shape better in the oil. If the tin has been sitting in a warm kitchen, give it twenty minutes in the fridge before you start. - 2
Make the beer batter
Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and white pepper into a bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the cold beer. Whisk from the middle outwards, pulling the flour in gradually. You want a batter the thickness of double cream: it should coat the back of a spoon and fall off in a slow, lazy ribbon. If it's too thick, add a splash more beer. Too thin, a tablespoon of flour. Don't overwork it. A few small lumps are fine and better than a batter that's been beaten into submission.
The beer should be cold, straight from the fridge. Cold batter meeting hot oil is what gives you that shatteringly crisp shell. Any lager or pale ale will do. Don't waste anything you'd actually want to drink. - 3
Heat the oil
Pour the oil into a deep, heavy-bottomed saucepan to a depth of about six centimetres. Heat it over a medium-high flame. To test, drop a small blob of batter into the oil. If it sinks, sizzles, and rises to the surface within a few seconds, turning golden, you're there. If it sits on the bottom doing nothing, the oil isn't ready. If it browns instantly, the oil is too hot. Turn it down and wait a minute.
If you have a thermometer, you're looking for about 180C. If you don't, trust the batter test. Your senses are more reliable than you think. - 4
Fry the fritters
Take a flour-dusted slice of Spam, dip it into the batter, let the excess drip off for a second, and lower it gently into the oil. Don't drop it. Fry two or three at a time, no more, because crowding the pan drops the temperature and you end up with something greasy rather than crisp. Turn them once with a slotted spoon when the underside is a deep, honest gold. The whole thing takes three to four minutes per batch. When they're done, the batter should be puffed and crunchy and the colour of a good conker.
Resist the urge to keep turning them. One flip. That's it. Constant fiddling tears the batter. - 5
Drain and serve
Lift the fritters out with a slotted spoon and set them on a wire rack over a tray, not on kitchen paper, which traps steam and softens the bottom. Sprinkle with a little fine salt while they're still hot. Serve with malt vinegar and a wedge of lemon on the side. Chips, if you're making a proper evening of it. Mushy peas if you want the full chip-shop treatment. They wait for nobody, so eat them standing at the counter if you have to.
Chef Tips
- •The batter must be cold and the oil must be hot. That temperature difference is the whole trick. If you can, make the batter and let it rest in the fridge for ten minutes before you start frying. The colder it is when it hits the oil, the crispier the result.
- •Spam comes in several varieties now. The original is what you want. It has a straightforward saltiness that works with the batter. Anything flavoured or reduced-salt will throw the balance off.
- •A wire rack is worth the washing up. Kitchen paper absorbs oil but also traps steam underneath the fritter, which softens the batter you've just spent time getting crisp. A rack lets the air circulate and the base stays crunchy. Small things, but they add up.
- •If you've got brown sauce in the cupboard, put it on the table. Nobody will judge you. This is not the evening for restraint.
Advance Preparation
- •The batter can be made up to an hour ahead and kept in the fridge. Give it a brief stir before using. If it has thickened, add a splash of cold beer to loosen it.
- •Spam fritters do not keep well. They are at their best within five minutes of leaving the oil. This is not a dish you make ahead. This is a dish you eat now.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 175g)
Calories
640 calories
Total Fat
47 g
Saturated Fat
12 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
34 g
Cholesterol
60 mg
Sodium
1250 mg
Total Carbohydrates
33 g
Dietary Fiber
1 g
Sugars
1 g
Protein
15 g
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