A watercolour of dark browned cubes of luncheon meat with caramelised golden pineapple rings, glossy with glaze
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from The Hawaiian and Filipino pairing of fried tinned pork with pineapple

Fried luncheon meat with pineapple

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

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Vegetable oil (sunflower or rapeseed).

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
0.05 L
Active
12 min
Total
15 min

Ingredients

Salt, fat, acid and sugar in one pan. It sounds like a joke and it is genuinely very good, which is why the pairing has outlived its origins.

Dry both. Wet pineapple will not caramelise and wet luncheon meat will not crust.

  1. Cube the luncheon meat thickly. Hot pan, a little oil, cubes in one layer. Three minutes untouched, then turn. Deep brown, not pale gold. Lift out.
  2. Pineapple rings into the pork fat left behind. Three minutes a side until the edges are dark and sticky.
  3. Meat back in. Soy sauce and vinegar around the edge of the pan so they reduce rather than steam.
  4. Chilli and pepper, one more minute turning everything through the glaze.

The vinegar is doing the real work. Without it this is fat and sugar; with it, it balances.

Serves 2 with rice or plain flatbread.

What this was adapted from

The Hawaiian and Filipino pairing of fried tinned pork with pineapple

  • fresh pineapple and a grill → tinned pineapple caramelised in the same pan

    The original grills both. One pan and one burner means cooking them in sequence in the same fat, which is arguably better -- the pineapple caramelises in the rendered pork fat and picks up the salt from it.