Buffaloco Moco

as i was getting ready for bed last night (after a great Oribtal concert, btw, but that's another story for another blog) i was overcome with a hankering for some loco moco. which is odd because i've only ever had a bite of a friend's at a zippy's in honolulu, so i'm not really quite sure exactly how it's supposed to taste.

one recipe seems to be quite popular, from big island grinds. truth be told, it's not really that complicated, but i figure something to go off of was better than nothing!

at the same time, i was craving buffalo meat, but again, i've only ever had once before about a decade ago when i was trying random meat (like ostrich, etc.) -- haven't had it since. so, what a perfect chance to combine those two cravings for an adventure -- loco moco made with buffalo meat! so i used the big island grinds recipe but took a couple of additional liberties, which i'll mention during the course of the post.

of course, i needed something to snack on while cooking, since i didn't really eat a decent dinner last night.



i used a sweet onion -- quite a bit of it, actually, maybe a good 1/3 to 1/2 cup or so. i really need to get a slapchop (warning, page is really annoying) or something. you can see as i was chopping (i'm left-handed, so it goes left to right) the pieces kept getting bigger and bigger. i only ended up using the left half, though.




one pound of buffalo meat, with onions and salt and pepper.




after made the patties, though, i thought to myself, "self, you should probably add some garlic, too!" cue a spoonful of minced garlic (from a jar, thankyouverymuch).



the recipe called for not-lean beef, and i remember reading somewhere that buffalo is extra lean, and since i'm with paula deen, i used a lot of butter in the pan when cooking the patties up.



while the meat was cooking, i looked ahead in the recipe and saw i needed to mix some flour and water to make a thickener for the sauce. uhh, what? O_o i just dumped 1/4 cup of flour in a bowl and started adding water. clearly this wasn't enough:



i added more and got something slightly runnier than glue, and decided to stick with this.



by this time, the meat had finished cooking. note to self -- extra onion means extra-fragile patties. (the patties were so thick i had to turn down the heat and just let them cook a bit longer than stated in the recipe.)



is beef stock the same thing as beef broth? i got this because the recipe called for "good" beef broth and the container looked fancy. yes, that's how i judge, by the cover. p.s. we have to import our beef stock from canada? really?



i added the flour thickener and thought i could just whisk away the lumps, but no! eep!



i googled and it said you could put the gravy in a blender to try and remove the lumps, but we don't have a blender(!) so i tried the kitchenaid with the whisk attachment. umm, even on high, it wasn't de-lumping the gravy :\



then i remembered we have a stick blender! yay! which worked great!



i fried up some eggs:



and assembled:



how does it taste? not too bad. i'm quite proud of myself for trying this, but next time i'll use real beef or maybe add some barbecue sauce to the buffalo since it came out quite bland due to its leanness. maybe add a bit of pepper on top. or furikake?