01-05-2025
Wartime pantry staple comes back into fashion with tins flying off the shelf as wave of nostalgia sweeps UK
Pistachios, cinnamon and avocados have been some of the trendiest foods of recent years.
But the latest food flying off shelves and filling up Instagram reels is a wartime classic - spam.
The highly processed pork snack, which was first manufactured during World War II rationing, is coming back into fashion, according to Waitrose.
Interest in spam and other nostalgic classics is rising ahead of Victory in Europe (VE) Day next week.
This year marks eight decades since World War II came to an end in 1945 and special commemorations are set to kick off from the May bank holiday on Monday.
In anticipation of the celebration, Waitrose said it has seen a wave of nostalgia sweeping its stores as people shop for 1940s pantry essentials.
Spam fritters or spam hash were popular ways to cook the lunch meat during the war and post-war period.
It could also be eaten cold and straight from the tin, chopped up into salads - although the latter sounds rather unappealing and may have contributed to spam's reputation for being unpleasant.
But these days, there are thousands of new ways to cook and eat spam, across almost any cuisine you could think of, and it is beloved by professional chefs and home cooks alike.
Last year, Gordon Ramsay waxed lyrical about spam and described it as a 'childhood staple'.
'My mum served us spam, egg, chips and beans,' he recalled in an episode of his National Geographic series Uncharted. 'It was a big staple. So why not? I'm going to elevate it.'
The celebrity chef, 58, cooked up a Hawaiian spam sandwich that featured a teriyaki sauce glaze, miso mayonnaise and grilled pineapple.
The food-obsessed lads behind Sorted Food, a YouTube channel with nearly three million subscribers, also have several spam recipes on their recipe app Sidekick that are highly popular.
Some of their favourite ways to cook spam are in dishes like spam musubi, army stew style pasta, and sesame fried spam with garlic and broccoli rice.
Sorted Food head chef Kush Bhasin tells FEMAIL his top tip for spam: 'Chop it up and use it instead of sausage in super quick ragus for pasta.
'However, the three recipes are so varied, hopefully they show the various ways spam can be used in modern cooking.'
On TikTok, foodies and home cooks are flexing their creativity in the kitchen to find new and exciting ways to bring spam to the table.
For example, Oliver Adkins - better known as Ollie Eats by his over 562,000 TikTok followers - put spam front and centre in his Yorkshire pudding hors d'oeuvres last Christmas.
The content creator and owner of Sosij filled mini Yorkshire puddings with mashed potatoes and slices of spam, to be dipped in gravy.
Meanwhile, content creator Marina Georgallides, who has a series of videos dedicated to using canned ingredients, suggested grating and airfrying spam to create a crispy, salty dish smothered in Korean pepper paste gochujang, soy sauce and sesame oil.
Blogger and cookbook author Tiffy Chen shared a video showing fans how to cook spicy garlic spam fried rice, which has received more than a million likes on TikTok.
Waitrose said it has seen sales of spam, corned beef, mixed dried fruit, and Heinz tomato soup shooting up, alongside searches for wartime recipes like bread and butter pudding.
Sales for Spam have risen by 48 per cent compared to this time last year, while corn beef slices are up 64% and mixed dried fruit is up 90 per cent.
Imogen Livesley, Waitrose archivist, said of the data: 'As the 80th VE Day anniversary approaches, we're seeing customers connect with the past by turning to the comforting familiarity of foods popular in wartime Britain.
'It seems the taste of history is proving a popular ingredient in commemorating the 80th anniversary, with classics like fish and chips, SPAM, and bread and butter pudding underscoring the emotional connection to this era, with food acting as a powerful vehicle for remembrance and commemoration.'
Spam, in particular, has enjoyed an enduring popularity since its introduction to the world in 1937.
It was first launched in the US by American multinational food processing company Hormel Foods Corporation as a means of increasing sales of pork shoulder, an unpopular cut of meat at the time.
Pork shoulder, ham, salt, water, potato starch, and sugar is compressed into a solid square block of meat, preserved by sodium nitrate and stored in now-iconic blue packaging with the yellow SPAM logo emblazoned on the tin.
Hormel still produces spam, which celebrated 80 years since its introduction in 2017. In 2012, the eighth billionth tin of spam was sold.
It became a staple during World War II when getting fresh meat to US soldiers at the front lines wasn't a possibility.
The tins followed soldiers throughout the world as the war continued to rage on, planting spam in far-flung countries including Japan, the Philippines and other Pacific islands - and the UK.
In 1941, spam arrived in the UK as part of the Lend-Lease program under which the US supplied the UK and other allied nations with food, oil and military supplies.
Even in the post-war period, spam continued to be a part of the British diet due to significant economic challenges and food shortages.
It was so ubiquitous that former prime minister Margaret Thatcher called it a 'wartime delicacy' and, in 1970, spam got its own sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus.
In the iconic comedy series, the Vikings sing: 'Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! Spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam. Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam!'
The versatility of spam made it a dependable protein to eat regularly, and the fact it didn't need to be refrigerated before opening meant people could stock up on it for long periods of time.
