HAWAIIAN/POLYNESIAN - Summer 2025 (Jul-Sept) Cuisine of the Quarter

Spam musubi - plain rice topped with furikake and fried Spam with a sauce of soy sauce, sugar, mirin, and sake, wrapped in nori. Spam is very salty especially with the sauce, I might get the low sodium Spam next time.

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Yeah, I tried it once (just spam) and thought it was terribly salty. And I’m a salt fiend.

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Looka great, thank you.

Saving!

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Yay! I hope you like it!

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Nice musubi!
I am not fond of spam, so I like them with teri chicken or portuguese sausage.

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On our last trip to Oahu we were served a magnificent macadamia nut ice cream. I swore it tasted just like Dreyer’s Toasted Almond ice cream from long ago. I’ve been trying to recreate that taste. That, and the wonderfully purple poi dinner rolls.

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Made Loco Moco for dinner. Roux gravy with mushrooms.

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Yum!

Yum

I’m totally craving Loco Moco now.
Maybe I’ll get around to making it.

Sheldon Simeon is one of my favorite Hawaiian chefs. His recipes and plays on real local foods takes it to the next level.

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Gravy makes it or breaks it. As long as it’s homemade, it’s going to be good rather than using a “brown gravy mix” of some sort. Onions and mushrooms are the usual components to a loco moco gravy…other than that it’s as simple as rice, a hamburger patty and a fried egg. Though some places will do variations on a theme…using fried rice instead of white rice, using kalua pork or a corned beef patty instead of a beef burger patty… But to me, it’s all about the gravy.

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I ordered it once with my cousins in Maui. That’s the only time I’ve eaten it. I ordered it at Nalu’s in Kihei.

(Thanks Google. I had forgotten the name of the restaurant, but I remembered where it was located on the map and I remembered the building)

I forgot I’d posted a query about the garlic shrimp soon after I got back from O’ahu :slight_smile:

I’ve made the SE version, and unfortunately did not care for the corn-starch thickener in the gravy.

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this recipe from a Hawaiian blog also uses cornstarch, but might be a better gravy. Could always substitute a preferred thickener.

also adding a recipe from my favourite Japanese recipe site, using a mushroom gravy

it looks like a lot of home cooks in Hawaii use the McCormick gravy powder. (as do a lot of home cooks making Poutine) . I have a ton of McCormick powders from a Silent Auction purchase a few months ago, but they’re too salty for our household.

discussion on Loco Moco on Reddit

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I make a gravy with onion, mushrooms and beef broth. It’s thickened with a roux.

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Corn starch gravy is traditional for Loco Moco, given the Asian influence in Hawaii (Chinese and Japanese use it as a traditional thickener). I prefer roux gravy. Sometimes I’ll freeze roux beef gravy and use it for LM but if not, I’ll make a quick pan sauce using butter, flour and a little beef stock in the left over hamburger grease and fond.

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