Messy has never looked tastier.
Photo: Nina Lincoff
Loco Moco isn’t beautiful. It’s a bed of rice, a blob of crumbled protein, a fried egg, and a slick of gravy. Mashed together, it’s really a brown rice mush. Entered in a contest, it wouldn’t get any points for presentation. Yet, Loco Moco, in its messy entirety, is pretty simple and ever so mmmm-inducing. Bear with me as I try to sell a delicious, calorie-packed pile of brown, meaty heap.
A traditional Hawaiian dish, Loco Moco could be considered a speciality, but specialty implies something grand, with numerous components and textures. Loco Moco is grand in the sloppy sense. Compared to other traditional local dishes, it’s comfortably situated next to Spam musubi—so much fat, salt, and meat. It’s not something to eat if you’re headed down to the beach, but it’s exactly what you want to eat when you’re headed toward the couch. The true mountain of food starts with rice topped with sautéed meat topped with gravy topped with an egg. Unsurprisingly, it’s good for every meal. Truthfully, one Loco Moco is probably three meals in itself, but if you’re eating Loco Moco, you’re hopefully in a state of mind where multi-meal portions aren’t of importance.
The ingredients in Loco Moco aren’t unusual, but the way they are combined on the plate comes as a welcomed diversion from a typical meat-and-rice dish. The sautéed onion and seasonings molds beautifully with the browned and savory meat, which infuses beefy richness to the clean, simple rice base. The gravy adds an intensely salty, unctuous binding to the dish. And topping anything with a fried egg is a good idea.
Loco Moco
1 large yellow onion
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 lb ground beef
Hot season salt like ‘Slap Yo Mama,’ to taste
Red pepper flakes, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 cup white Japanese rice, cooked, warm and ready for use
1 can of Campbell’s Beef Gravy
4 eggs, for fried eggs
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1. Add the ground beef to a sauté pan and cook over medium-high heat until brown, breaking up the beef while cooking. Season with salt and pepper. Remove beef from sauté pan with a slotted spoon or large fork and place in a bowl lined with paper towels. Reserve some of the beef fat in the pan.
2. Thinly slice the yellow onion and add to the sauté pan with the beef fat and add 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter. Add a pinch of salt and sauté over medium-high heat until the onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the browned ground beef back to the pan and heat through. Season with red pepper flakes, salt and pepper to taste. Set aside for assembly.
3. Heat the gravy in a microwave until hot and set aside.
4. In a small frying pan, heat 1 tablespoon of butter until melted and hot. Crack one egg into the pan and cook for about 2 minutes over medium-high heat, not breaking the yolk and letting the white firm up. Carefully insert a spatula under the white and check to see if it is lightly brown and set. If not, leave on for an additional minute. When the white is set, carefully flip the egg, being sure not to break the yolk. Fry for an additional 2 minutes and season with fresh pepper, a sprinkling of salt and some red pepper flakes if desired. Assemble the Loco Moco immediately by laying a bed of warm rice on a plate, topped with a quarter of the meat mixture, a quarter of the gravy and the fried egg. Tradition dictates that gravy drench the egg as well, but it’s a more beautiful mess this way.
