A watercolour of thick golden battered fritters, one cut to show pale pink meat inside, on a plate
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from The British chip shop spam fritter

Spam fritters (luncheon meat fritters)

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Plain flour.

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
2
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
0.2 L
Active
15 min
Total
20 min

Ingredients

Unfashionable, extremely good, and the best argument on this site for keeping a tin of luncheon meat. This is the chip shop spam fritter: thick slices of luncheon meat in a plain, crisp batter, done in a frying pan rather than a fryer.

The batter is flour and water and nothing else. No egg, no raising agent. It should be the thickness of double cream: thick enough to cling to a wet slice of meat, thin enough to run off a spoon in a ribbon. Roughly 100 g of flour to 120 ml of water, added gradually, because flours vary.

  1. Batter mixed and left to stand while the oil heats. Standing lets the flour hydrate and the batter goes smoother.
  2. Luncheon meat cut into slices about 1 cm thick. Patted dry, or the batter slides off.
  3. Oil about 1 cm deep, properly hot. A drop of batter should sizzle immediately and rise. Too cool and the batter drinks oil and goes heavy.
  4. Each slice through the batter, let the excess run off, then straight in. Two to three minutes a side until deep gold and crisp.
  5. Drained on anything absorbent, salt and pepper, vinegar over.

Do not crowd the pan. Two at a time in a small pan, because the oil temperature drops as each one goes in and that is what makes a soggy fritter.

Served the chip shop way, they want chips and mushy peas. A tin of marrowfat peas simmered down with a knob of butter and a splash of the vinegar is close enough. On a single burner, do the peas first and keep them warm with the lid on while the fritters fry.

Batter contains uncooked flour, which is not safe to taste. Flour is a raw agricultural product and has been linked to outbreaks; see raw flour. It is fine the moment it is cooked through.

Serves 2.

What this was adapted from

The British chip shop spam fritter: a slice of luncheon meat in a plain batter, deep fried

  • a deep fryer → about a centimetre of oil in a frying pan

    Shallow frying in a pan browns one face at a time and needs turning, where a fryer does all of it at once. The batter is a little less even and the result is almost identical, on a camping burner rather than in a chip shop.