Recipe Ideas for Aulani

BlueRibbon

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jul 8, 2018
My family will be going to Aulani in May 2020 and with our 5 kids(ages 17-4) we'll be staying in a 2-Bedroom villa. Eating out a few times is OK, but we plan on preparing/eating the majority of breakfasts and dinners in the room. My wife and I are not creative cooks and we've been wanting to find "Hawaiian" recipes and meal ideas for when we're there(i.e. we don't want to make meatloaf for dinner while in Hawaii). Besides the obvious, the reason we want to do this is to make sure our kids don't feel like they've missed out on eating local hawaiian cuisine.

What's funny is that we already cook some hawaiian dishes fairly regularly at our house. Spam Musubi and Spam fried rice are favorites, as well as Kalua pork(too bad there aren't any slow cookers in the rooms!) But we need some variety.

Any ideas out there that people have used and worked out well with the tools available in the Aulani villas?
 
If you can manage the finances, I would go out a couple of times for authentic Hawaiian food, and keep things simple and quick when you are making meals. It’s your vacation too. FYI Aulani has a barbecue quests can use, that makes things easier.
 
I tend to cook a lot of seafood when I go to Hawaii. Opah fish tacos are the bomb! Shrimp scampi is easy peasy (yeah, I know the shrimp is frozen, but it is still a nice, light dish). A basic broiled/grilled fish with mango salsa is delicious.

I also like to eat a lot of salads - either green or pasta. You can continue the seafood theme by adding salmon, or you can get a rotisserie chicken to add.

And if you are feeling totally lazy, Foodland's fried chicken rocks too ;)
 


I do this at one at home all the time. It is not the same as sitting outside up at the North Shore after a morning at the beach but it hits the spot. I think you would be wise to bring the small amount of paprika and cayenne from home, if you were going to make this. I am pretty sure you can ask to borrow a rice cooker from housekeeping if one isnt already in the room

https://www.desumama.com/hawaiian-shrimp-truck-recipe-butter-with-butter-and-garlic/
Another thing we make a lot of is Hawaiian style Portuguese sausage. I buy either Redondo or Kings brand. You can get it almost everywhere but I find Safeway in Kapolei often has buy one get one free. This is pretty much a breakfast staple for us. You can also buy them in hot dog size so instead of paying $5 each for one on a bun at Mamas Snack Shop you can bbq a whole pack for your family down at the grills or even pan fry them in the room.


I have bought ready to mix green papaya slaw at famers markets on Oahu but you can make it yourself too. This is a recipe I just googled but I know the ones I have bought in a bag are pretty simple and dont have the mint or kefir leaves

https://ediblehi.com/green-papaya-salad/

We always have tons of fruit-pineapple is a given but the papayas and mangos are soooooo amazing in Hawaii so we try to eat them everyday. I bought a pineapple core-er on Amazon to take with us the last time because someone else had posted about it here on the Dis. The one I bought is collapsible to flat so it travelled well. The fun thing about this is that the pineapple comes right out and then you can make the entire peel a vessel for drinks.

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We stayed a week in a 1-Bedroom last November for 6 nights and cooked most meals in the room; we only ate out twice. Though we mainly stuck with what we know (we jokingly referred to our first night's spaghetti meal as "Hawaiian Spaghetti"), we had heard that the local grocery stores have better Poke than the local restaurants, which is a local raw fish delicacy, so it requires no cooking! The grocery store Poke (we got ours at the local Safeway) comes in all different flavors and can be stored in your room's fridge and is served with rice. We used the rice cooker in the villa and made a couple of rice and poke meals. We also found a Macadamia nut pancake mix in the local grocery store for breakfasts; super easy!

PS- We made friends with some folks at the pool who were checking out the following day, and they gave us a TON of their leftover groceries! Make friends at the pool :)

Below is a link with more information regarding Poke:
https://guide.michelin.com/mo/en/article/features/6-things-to-know-about-real-hawaiian-poke
 
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Not sure where you're planning on doing your grocery shopping, but most grocery stores have luau-type foods frozen or ready made, decent quality and not terribly expensive (under the circumstances), Costco might be the most cost effective. You will often find lau lau, kalua pig, lomi lomi salmon, and poi. Those Noh packets of haupia are pretty good (though making it from scratch is better, but who's going to get a corn starch for a vacation).

Definitely second the Portuguese sausage recommendation (which is unique to Hawaii and not just linguica) for breakfast and the best produce, particularly tropical produce, you can find. If you go to a farmer's market or see someone selling on the side of the road, don't overlook avocados, because often you can find better tasting avocados than just Haas you get on the mainland.

I also think Costco and Longs have the best selection of snacks local to Hawaii. (I don't have a sweet tooth, but one of my absolute favs is li hing sour lychee gummies at Longs.)
 

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