We made Spam during Bacon Fest Sacramento 2018. Spam is one of those things that we do at Magpie from time to time, mostly for ourselves more than anything else. Everyone in the kitchen gets into it and Magpie has a bit of a connection to Hawaii.

It’s mostly the irony of making spam from a whole, organically raised animal that makes the process a real joy.

Guests are a all over the place with it. It’s not that people don’t like Spam. Some people do. But maybe 50 percent are skeptical of it – and with good reason. I wouldn’t recommend eating too much meat out of a can, ever.

But making it by hand is a different thing. And our spam is good. I think if we called it something French and served it with a cherry mustard folks would go nuts for it. Maybe we will one day.

We were given half a pig raised up at Rancho Llano Secco, North of Sacramento.

The recipe at Magpie has been floating around for years. We started off with a recipe we found online.