Loco Moco Recipe: A Hearty and Simple Dish from Hawaii

I first heard of Loco Moco while playing Café World on Facebook, the restaurant game in which you need to prepare dishes from all over the world. Each dish has a little cartoon picture and, when I came across Loco Moco, I had no idea it was a real dish. It seemed like a fun name so I decided to do some research about it, It turned out to be a real dish.

Loco Moco is a Hawaiian dish was many variations, but the modern standard version contains white rice topped with a hamburger, a fried egg, and brown gravy. There are versions with bacon, ham, Spam, pork, sausage, teriyaki beef, teriyaki chicken, mahi-mahi fish, shrimp, oysters, or other meats.

Culinary history states that that Loco Moco was created in 1949 at the Lincoln Grill in Hilo, Hawaii. Local Lincoln Wreckers sports club member boys, who had little money, asked the owner of the Grill to take a bowl of rice and top it with a hamburger and pour brown gravy over it all. It cost only twenty-five cents. One of the boys was nicknamed Crazy, which is loco in Spanish, so they named it Loco Moco, moco because it rhymed with loco. It was soon added to the regular menu at Lincoln Grill. The egg was not a part of the dish until later.

I had my misgivings about Loco Moco mainly because of the fried egg combined with the gravy. I could handle either the egg or the gravy on top of the rice and burger but the combination of the two made me wary. I was going to try this with the rice but I decided to go with mashed potatoes instead because I had it on hand and I am used to burgers on top of potatoes. Potatoes and rice are both starches, so they accomplish the same effect. I probably will try this with rice one day but, until then, I think my recipe is just as good.

Keep in mind that this is a very heavy and filling dish that is not for everyone. Be sure to have a lot of drink on hand to get the Loco Moco down. This is a great dish if you're really hungry and want a quick, easy and cheap meal.

Ingredients

6 ounces ground beef
1/4 cup onions, chopped
1 can beef gravy (or make homemade, about 8 ounces)
1 egg
1 cup mashed potatoes (or traditionally 1 cup of cooked rice)
1 tablespoon oil
1 pat of butter

Directions

Prepare the mashed potatoes (or rice to be traditional).

Combine the ground beef and onions and form them into a burger patty.

Open the gravy, pour it into a pot and heat it on the stove.

Pour a tablespoon of oil into a skillet on medium heat and fry the burger until it is thoroughly cooked through and browned.

Place a pat of butter into a skillet and fry the egg sunny side up or turn over style until cooked to the desired state.

Scoop the mashed potatoes onto the plate or bowl in a relatively flat layer. Lay the burger on top of the potatoes. Lay the fried eggs on top of the burger. Pour the hot beef gravy generously over the egg, burger and potatoes.

Serve immediately.

For a healthier version, you can use ground turkey, low-fat, reduced sodium gravy and Pam spray instead of oil or butter. For variations, you can try adding more vegetables, such as bell peppers, mushrooms or peas and carrots, or spices, such as oregano, cayenne pepper or peppercorns. The sky is the limit for this dish, unless you want to go with the traditional version of Loco Moco.