Other Hawaiian favorites
Musubi gets top billing around here, but it was never the only thing on the table. These are the other local favorites I grew up with: the plate lunch dishes I am writing up as recipes, and the store-bought snacks that taste like home. Meat jun is the first recipe done.
The dishes
Meat jun
Thin marinated beef dipped in egg and pan-fried, served plate-lunch style with rice. A Korean name, but a dish you really only find in Hawaii.
Read the recipeLoco moco
Rice, a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and a ladle of brown gravy over the whole thing. Diner comfort food, island style.
Read the recipeChicken katsu
A chicken cutlet in a crisp panko crust, fried golden, sliced, and served over rice with a tangy katsu sauce.
Read the recipeKalua pork
Pork shoulder cooked low and slow with Hawaiian salt until it pulls apart. Smoky, salty, and about as simple as cooking gets.
Read the recipeKaraage chicken
Japanese-style fried chicken, marinated in shoyu and ginger and fried in bite-size pieces. Just as good cold the next day.
Read the recipeHawaiian mac salad
Soft elbow macaroni in a creamy, mayo-forward dressing. This is the scoop that turns two plates of food into a real plate lunch.
Read the recipeHaupia
A firm coconut pudding cut into neat squares. Cool, silky, and not too sweet, the dessert you see at every luau.
Read the recipeButter mochi
Chewy and rich, baked from mochiko and coconut milk with plenty of butter. Somewhere between a cake and a piece of mochi.
Read the recipeWant one of these dishes written up next? Tell me which one and I will move it up the list.
Island snacks and drinks
These are the store-bought ones, the stuff you grab at the airport or the corner store on the way to the beach. Not recipes, just the flavors that taste like home.
Li hing mui
Dried plum dusted in that red sweet-salty-sour powder. People shake the powder on everything back home: gummy bears, fresh mango, even the rim of a drink.
Crack seed
The whole family of preserved fruits and seeds sold from big glass jars: rock salt plum, sweet and sour lemon peel, dried mango, ginger, even cuttlefish. Every kid had a favorite.
Chocolate macadamia nuts
Macadamia nuts covered in chocolate, the box everyone brings home from the airport. Buttery and rich, and gone fast once the lid is off.
Kaki mochi
Also called mochi crunch, these are the shoyu-glazed rice crackers in every snack mix. Crunchy and salty. Toss them with popcorn and furikake and you have hurricane popcorn.
Maui onion chips
Thick kettle chips seasoned with sweet Maui onion. Hard to put down. Maui Style and Kitch'n Cook'd are the ones to look for.
Aloha Maid drinks
The canned drinks with the old hula-girl label. Guava, iced tea, pass-o-guava, lilikoi. Cold out of the cooler at the beach, nothing better.
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