Recreating Sheldon Simeon's Loco Moco From Taste

Hi, I'm Jamila and I'm in the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen

to have a super secret conversation about Chris Morocco.

Once again, we're putting Chris's super taster

abilities to the test.

This is Sheldon Simeon's Loco Moco.

I'm challenging Chris to recreate this dish in just one day.

He'll be able to taste it, touch it, and smell it,

but at no point will he be able to see this dish.

At the end of the day, we'll come back

to see his final creation and I'll be the judge.

[intense music]

Feeling okay.

The mask has a little bit of a funny smell.

You know, so I'm working through that.

Hmm, I don't know, it's like a savory meaty,

but like right down the middle.

I'm feeling what seems to be the lacy edge of a fried egg.

Trying not to break the yolk such

that you then get egg yolk running

around all over everything else,

which I think could really kind of get

in the way of deciding what the other elements

might be here.

Crispy egg, almost like like a mushroomy,

but the shape, like what is that?

Very firm, very savory,

very deep like mushroom jerky, soy sauce

or Worcestershire sauce in there.

Something that's really doubling down

on the umami forwardness.

Let's start with like portobello mushroom,

but it feels like it could be the sort of the main kind

of stock of like a trumpet mushroom as well.

Those get kind of big.

Where is like all this sauciness coming from?

Not quite gravy

because there's not quite enough of it to be gravy.

So that seems to be like a very sweet

little slice of onion.

I'm also getting like little bits,

feels like there's kind of black pepper all over this.

Seems to be a beef burger.

There's definitely like a good bit of fat to this patty.

Oh god, what is this?

Is this rice?

No, is this grits?

There's like a dairy kind of flavor to it.

Like almost like these grits were cooked in milk

or combination of water and milk,

but also like finished with butter.

The grits are great.

God, the texture.

This kind of slightly wet, moldable putty like consistency

and yet within it, you know there are some

of these like bigger bits of grain and smaller bits of grain

or is it rice?

Oh god, improbable as it might be,

I would say like this is like a rice based grit.

Flavor wise, it's giving me like something pretty neutral.

Like what would you even call this?

Is this like a breakfast burger?

Something about that is sort

of like very coastal American south

where you have a lot of like rice culture,

kind of narrows the aperture a little bit

for me psychologically.

Alright, I'm done tasting.

Time to make a grocery list.

[upbeat music]

Mushroom breakfast burger with rice grits, eggs, butter.

There's only a handful of mushrooms that get that big,

but not in a frilly way,

either large cremini or small portobello mushrooms.

I'd also love some small trumpet mushrooms.

I'm thinking ground beef, something in the kind

of ground chuck, 20% fat or even 25%.

Something like

a Carolina Gold American long grain white rice, milk.

I feel okay.

Trying to remember if I've ever felt such a complete

and utter lack of clarity around

what a dish was while feeling like I had a reasonable grasp

on what was in it.

Jamila Robinson, our Editor in Chief is my judge today.

It's like always intimidating to be judged by your boss.

So that'll be interesting.

[intense music]

I have a progression like rice, burger mushroom, egg, pasta.

We moved the bowls, we moved bowls.

I think we're gonna turn rice into grits.

So we've got just like a standard long grain rice.

So I'm gonna throw this in here.

I don't wanna like turn it into powder,

but I wanna break up these grains a little bit.

Why doesn't my starting ratio be like one cup

long grain rice with three cups of liquid.

50/50 between milk and water,

and butter in there frankly as well.

And a good bit of salt there.

I'm gonna bring this to a simmer.

Meanwhile, let's talk mushrooms.

What if we did a mix just for fun?

King trumpet, really even thin slices of mushroom here

and then a few creminis.

I love a mushroom.

Let's take a check in on our liquid.

It's gonna get some black pepper.

I'm trying to end up in like a drier place

between a porridge and just fluffy cooked rice.

I wanna kind of whisk them in

so that things don't immediately clump together.

Let's just keep that at a slow roll.

This is a sweet onion, very little bite to it,

even in its raw form.

Some kind of chunky slices here.

We're already getting some sticking

'cause like those finer pieces are sort

of settling down there.

Okay, so new plan is we're just gonna cook rice

and then see what we need to do with it to get it to the

texture that I was experiencing in the original dish.

Slightly wet, moldable putty, like consistency.

So I've got rice version one,

sort of doing more of like rice grits approach,

and I have rice version two,

just evenly cooked whole rice grains.

So move it to the back burner.

Porridge is coming along nicely.

Burger seemed simple:

beef chuck seasoned with salt and pepper.

Sear off the patty.

Just wanna make sure I'm getting some good contact there.

Get some good flavor development.

If you're gonna start joining up

any of these cooking processes,

for me it's like burger plus mushrooms

'cause the mushroom are almost acting as the sauce.

So that's looking pretty good.

So rice grits, let's see how they're coming along.

Not bad honestly.

For the burger,

I just wanna get a nice sear probably more closer

to like medium, frankly.

That moment where those juices start percolating through.

Usually a pretty good sign,

like you're at about medium rare.

How long you go past that is usually the question

I'm sort of playing around with.

The main mistake people make is like they're not usually

cooking one burger, they're cooking four,

and the pan doesn't stay hot enough.

That's looking pretty good to me.

We've got good color on that second side,

I'm gonna let the burger rest over here.

I wanna pour out a little bit of this.

Alright, so I'm now cooking the mushrooms

in that leftover beef fat.

Like a lot of like this fat, like it's gotten sort

of like the extra crispy bits

of black pepper.

Sometimes like it can make a dish a little bit overwhelming.

In the initial phase of cooking,

they'll pretty much absorb whatever fat you throw at them,

but you have to resist the temptation to totally soak them.

Once they start to break down and soften,

they basically start to exude

that fat back into the cooking environment,

and we're getting really nice golden brown color there.

Mushrooms lose a lot of their volume as they cook,

so it's always good to start with a little more than less.

Once we have like a little initial kind of browning,

I'll start to season a little bit.

I don't know, rice one, don't count it out.

It's like John Hamm in Baby Driver, you know?

He's not dead.

So now I'm gonna throw some onion right

in with the mushroom, butter in too.

That's gonna help kind of soften

and start to break down those onions to an extent.

Alright, so this is rice version two.

I'm just gonna fluff this, turn it off,

let that steam out for 10 minutes.

Let's get crazy.

Let's throw a little chicken broth in there.

Adding the broth is gonna deglaze

and pick up some of the crispy bits

in the bottom of the skillet.

It's gonna add a little bit of body,

so that's gonna cook down and reduce into just sort

of like a clingy dressing.

A little bit of Worcestershire,

just amping up that savory quality to the mushrooms.

A similar thing used in a small quantity might be

like a soy sauce.

If I'm situating this dish

as coming from coastal American south,

does it really make sense for me

to put soy sauce in it though?

Not necessarily.

Whereas Worcestershire sauce,

maybe we've picked up all those brown bits

that were in the center where we cooked our burger.

I wanna cook this out though until it's like it's clinging,

you know?

Like stage six clinger.

So we're making a sunny side up egg, lightly crispy.

I like to base with like a little bit of oil just

to kind of cook that little ring of white

that always stubbornly insists on not cooking through.

These are our elements.

If you take like a hot freshly steamed rice,

and you mash some butter into it

and you throw some salt in it as well,

like where does that net you out?

You know? What are you doing?

Try this.

There's this like rice element in the bottom of this dish.

[Dan] Yeah.

[Chris] Like that like doesn't really wanna break down,

and I don't know why you do it anyway.

[Dan] You're gonna combine all these

things with like a mushy grit?

No, I have to pick a lane here.

Yeah.

What seems more plausible?

I can't imagine all this stuff going on top of that.

It's gonna sink in there and be like a mush.

Sink in there?

Yeah, reeling it back.

Really? Okay.

That's my opinion.

Am I misleading him?

Maybe just make some rice, come back to that.

[Chris] Okay.

Just my opinion,

I'm like getting a vibe like

rice grits were not the right path,

but maybe some buttery rice that's a little bit clingy

and clumpy could be.

So let's kind of like go for that.

This is the rice that I simply steamed

and then put some butter and salt in.

So we've now got burger element, onions,

we have mushrooms and then we're gonna do egg.

So this is my first attempt at the dish.

This is a breakfast burger with mushrooms, rice,

and a sunny side up egg.

This doesn't look like anything I've ever had,

that's for sure.

Maybe my egg is a tad too crispy.

Is that possible?

Nice medium cooked burger.

These pieces of mushroom feel a little too small.

And then how about our rice?

It's buttery, but it doesn't hold together,

and I got so much guff about the rice grits.

Maybe we can safely assume it's not

that in the original dish.

Let's talk scores.

Ingredients, not feeling amazing.

I'm gonna say 60%.

Technique, I feel a little bit more confidence.

I would say 70.

Appearance, maybe that's where I'm closer to like an 80.

Taste, 70%.

There's something weird going on with the starch,

and I think the mushrooms could be better.

Here are my actual current scores.

Okay, this isn't like so bad.

One thing generally speaking is off with my ingredients.

There could be a technique consideration

that is coupled with that.

The next tasting is all about ingredients.

It's all about that starch element

and really dialing in the mushrooms.

Honestly I don't feel terrible seeing those scores.

[intense music]

Here we go.

Tasting number two.

Smells the same.

Still mushroomy.

You know like the non-specific meatiness.

So moving down, again, this like crispy side,

just like a very deep level of browning here.

These are some big pieces.

It got like super crispy.

It's the fact of it not being symmetrical.

That makes me think it's not portobello.

Not cremini.

That to me is like a cross section of king trumpet.

All king trumpet?

I'm standing by my decision to put Worcestershire in there,

but I almost feel like there could be some

soy sauce in there too.

I don't know how I missed this on the first pass,

but there is actually sauce on here.

Very buttery textural sauce,

and I'm wondering if that's the sort

of like the saucy element that went with the mushrooms.

I'm wondering if in the first tasting

that clumping together of the rice was

because there was this really rich meaty sauce,

kind of clumping it together, projecting a lot of fat.

It's been thickened possibly with some sort of starch.

The rice just seems like good old short grain white rice.

So now I'm just looking for,

is there anything in the burger?

I am getting like a little tickle of garlic.

Maybe it's like more of that onion,

finely chopped and put in there.

I'm actually feeling pretty good.

The sauce and the rice almost tasted like one thing,

whereas it's two distinct elements.

So a lot of our process is gonna be the same other than

mushrooms are gonna come out of the skillet entirely.

We're gonna build the sauce in there.

Sauce is going to come into the dish just

for the final plating.

This is medium grain rice.

I don't even know what to say regionally

for this dish to be honest.

If there's soy sauce in it, I understand it even less.

Same technique on the rice,

but I'm using the shorter grain rice,

which is gonna have more of a tendency

to wanna clump together.

I just threw a pinch of salt in there.

Meanwhile, let's cut some vegetables.

This is going to be fine diced onion for the burger itself.

Super fine dice of garlic as well.

Putting aromatic elements in my burgers is

something I don't do.

I'd rather keep the burger plain as is and add other flavors

and elements around it.

Let's do our sliced onion for part

of the aromatic base for the gravy.

Mushrooms.

King trumpet mushrooms have such great flavor,

but also very grillable, very searable.

They're so big.

Check in on the rice.

Just wanna bring it to a simmer.

So we'll do low and we'll time 20 minutes.

Salt, pepper.

We gotta cook these burgers.

So I'm looking for that little bit of smoke there.

Oh, I hate putting [beep] raw onion in burger.

It's just so annoying.

Like the additional sugars in the onions

make those bits that are now getting like so dark.

You can see how much fat the meat is giving off.

I mean it's really, it's quite wild.

You wanna make sure you have enough heat going

for you so that as the juices start to release post flip,

you can kind of get out ahead of that.

Still be putting on a good sear with that

second side.

One and two.

I've poured out a good bit of the fat,

so I'm just laying in these mushrooms.

Salt.

Get a really good sear on them.

Might as well just get the butter in here, melt it,

get a little zhuzh on these mushrooms,

getting started on our onions here.

I wanna calm the heat down.

Get them a little bit like melting, tender.

I'm gonna do two cups of broth.

Let that cook out.

Gravy is just a really ultra flavorful liquid.

Often, a meat-based broth that is thickened

to a consistency that's gonna coat a spoon.

Basically you just have to figure out

how do you wanna thicken it?

Like do you wanna start with a roux?

Usually a flower based roux that's gonna be sort

of the beginning of the cooking process

or a slurry, which is typically

how you would use corn starch, which comes in at the end

of the cooking process when flavors are

where they need to be,

but you just want something to be thicker.

Let's put a little bit of soy

and Worcestershire in, the teaspoon of each.

Worcestershire definitely lifts the flavor up a bit.

So I'm just mixing equal parts cornstarch and water.

If you just put raw powdered cornstarch into this,

it'll start activating

and binding in all kinds of unpredictable ways.

That was about half of it

and that seems like it's probably enough.

I need to bring it to a simmer to fully activate it.

So presto change-o.

We've got gravy, so it was like running right off our spoon

before and now it's clanging, nice and concentrated.

I'm gonna turn that off.

Alright, so we've got egg coming up.

When you're making sunny side up eggs,

basting with oil a great way to kind of cook

through the top without making your yolk

cloudy and flipping it.

Great, so we can assemble 'em.

We wanna just get a good scoop

of our rice grits, burger patty,

and then we've got our mushrooms.

Alright, so now we do our sauce.

Just wanna make sure I kind of go

until we're getting some sort of pulling down on the side.

And then last certainly not least, our egg.

There it is.

Final dish.

What an interesting journey.

Just based on my scores for my initial pass at the dish,

I'm not wildly far off.

Hopefully, I got a little bit closer

and yet I have no idea what this dish is

or where it comes from.

Let's talk scores.

Ingredients.

Let's say that we got up to a 75.

Technique, with the gravy enhancement,

let's say we're at 85.

For appearance, again, the enhancement of the sauce,

let's call it 95.

Taste, we'll see.

There's whatever this is called,

but it's where it comes from that I'm most curious about.

Having Jamila, who is my boss, judge me,

is gonna be certainly an interesting

experience in and of itself.

I'm very curious to see how that goes.

Hey Chris. Hey Jamila.

How are you?

Did they already tell you about the rice grits thing?

I heard all the things,

but I wanna present to you Loco Moco.

What?

Loco Moco.

This is a dish that is traditional to Hawaii.

It's a comfort dish.

This one is from Sheldon Simeon.

It's what you'll find at a diner on all parts of Hawaii.

Essence of Loco Moco is rice, ground beef,

gravy, mushrooms, and the egg on top as a stack.

Besides the grits, what was your biggest challenge?

It was really just not having perceived

that there was a sauce

that was independent of everything else.

Oh God, what is this?

Well, what I've learned about this dish is that all

of these elements are separate.

The gravy is cooked separately from the beef patty,

cooked separately from getting

that caramelization on the onions and mushrooms.

And then of course the fried egg on top.

Is it a trumpet mushroom?

It probably could be a trumpet mushroom

or whatever you might encounter.

This is Chef Simeon's very specific take on this dish.

Trumpet adds a little bit of that chef's flavor

and that chef's character.

You added Worcestershire.

[Chris] Uh huh.

Have you ever seen this before?

Kitchen Bouquet?

You know what's so funny?

The only time I've ever used

that was it is a food stylists hack ingredient

for getting phenomenally deep color on a turkey.

Is there soy sauce in addition to that

or is it just that?

There's soy as well. Oh, interesting.

Okay, so let's talk about the patty.

Some of the key things

that weren't in the patty were things like garlic salt.

It had panko crumbs in there.

There's a little mayo.

I know you're making a face,

but I like a patty with some chopped onion.

Oh, I hate putting [bleep] raw onion in burger.

And another ingredient, you used cornstarch

to thicken the gravy.

Sheldon Simeon's recipe calls

for just making a rouz with flour.

Very, very traditional.

I had a 50/50 shot with that one.

You really nailed so much of the flavor

and even getting the rice

even after having some issues with the rice.

Also on technique that I think is so important is

that you've got this nice hard sear on the mushrooms

and that's something that Sheldon Simeon's

recipe really calls for.

And the other thing I think is really important

is the gravy.

Even though the thickening agent was different,

the texture of the gravy was so beautiful.

[Chris] That end point.

It feels like you nailed it there.

Nice. Okay.

And let's taste it.

[Chris] Okay, get a burger.

[Jamila] Look at that color.

That's delicious.

Try his and then you know, we can kind of see here.

I think the biggest difference that I get is really just

in the quality of the patty.

It's not meatloaf,

but it's heading a little bit more

in that direction in terms of like a little bit

finer texture.

The meat's been worked a little bit more.

The garlic salt.

Yeah, you taste a lot more garlic in this one.

So maybe we talk about the scores?

Sure.

So for ingredients, you gave yourself a 75,

but I'm gonna give you a 78.

You actually got more of those ingredients.

Okay. Technique.

You gave yourself an 85, but I'm giving you a 90.

Appearance, I mean, look at this, you've nailed it.

I love the edginess on your fried egg.

You gave yourself a 95,

but I'm gonna give you the 98.

For taste.

What do you give yourself?

I think this is one of the closer ones that I've gotten.

I've pushed like maybe like 90.

I'm gonna give you the edge here and give you a 92.

I'll certainly take that.

So overall you gave yourself an 86,

but I'm gonna give you an 89.

Very good.

Flirting with an A.

That was really close.

Wow, it's probably the best I've done in a while.

So good.

So cool.

Thank you for doing this.

Loco Moco, everybody. Loco Moco.

I honestly felt pretty great today.

We worked through the rice situation,

getting that much closer on the gravy.

Really gratifying.

I really liked the dish.

Totally new to me.

Mayonnaise.

Didn't see that one coming.

He's got very perky looking mushrooms, very perky.

Done.