Thursday, August 09, 2012

corned beef

Our food culture in Hawaii is "unusual" to many.

We eat SPAM as well as other types of canned mystery meats.

One mystery meat in particular is canned corned beef.

Growing up we would mix a can with some onion, cooked potato and an egg.

Spoon out a dollop into a heated pan with oil, cook on both sides and dinner is served.

If your family was larger, more potato was added to "stretch" the can of corned beef.

I recently learned that there is a shortage of corned beef.

Apparently, anti-parasitic drugs in high levels were found which stopped the export of the canned goods from Brazil.

This in turn, caused the price to sky rocket here.

In fact, I've seen stores stock their corned beef behind the customer service counter, so no one "walks" off with them.

They're that premium.

A market recently had a sale on this and we picked up a couple cans.

It made for a great comfort food dinner.

What is a comfort food for you unique to where you live?

7 comments:

K said...

I've only ever had this in corned beef hash at diners, v. salty and tasty!

Rowena said...

Anti-parasitic drugs...ewwww, I just lost my appetite. I don't think I'll be buying that corned beef after all, but comfort foods are a cinch over here. Just boil up some pasta!

KirkK said...

Hey Kat - What's the price of a can now? Here they like Carne Asada Burritos....

K and S said...

very salty but tasty is right, K :)

yeah, Rowena, eww :0 but mmm! ;)

on sale it was $4.29 at Don Quijote, Kirk...I could go for a good carne asada burrito though :)

Take care everyone.
Kat

gtrine said...

I not only love canned corned beef, but we make sure to have 3 cans on stock!

Anonymous said...

As an expat Hawaiian, we still have spam, vienna sausage, and canned corned beef in the pantry all the time. We can get both the vienna sausage and the spam at pretty reasonable prices here in AZ, but the canned corned beef is like $6+ a can!! And the Tongans here buy the super big cans a lot to make their lupulu, which is what I call Tongan lau-lau.

K and S said...

so lucky to have stock, Gtrine :)

lupulu sounds interesting, Anon! Our SPAM in Hawaii is expensive too, $1.99 a can?! on sale it comes down to $1.59, no $.99 a can days anymore...

Take care you two.
Kat