By an edhat reader
I was reflecting on how I miss the Maui Burger that the Aloha Restaurant,once on Carrillo, served. It had a decadent cheese sauce that I would like to make.
Does anyone know the recipe that they used for the cheese sauce?
The Aloha Restaurant Maui Burger
Channelfog
March 2, 2023, 5:18 am
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Written by Channelfog
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Where was it located?
The Aloha was on the corner of De la Vina and Carrillo. I believe Mel’s currently occupies the building.
As I recall, here is the basic cheese sauce “recipe” that you are craving:
– 2 cups Nacho cheese sauce. You can buy an entire #10 can of NCS at Smart & Final or melt a portion of Velveta processed American cheese. Either way, the “cheese” in the sauce is very inexpensive.
– 1 cup Ranch Dressing.
– 3 Tbls Siracha or other hot sauce that you like….we like Valentina, Tapatillo or Cholula brands.
= 1 small can (3 oz or so) diced green chiles….if you can find Hatch chiles and cut ’em up yourself, that’ll work better.
– 1/4 tsp salt
– 1/4 tsp onion powder
– 1/2 tsp garlic powder
Mix everything together by hand…..let set overnight (if you can wait that long). After mixing and waiting overnight, have a taste…..then you can salt to taste. That should be pretty close to the sauce you are seeking. Hopefully it’ll be close to what you remember….if not, it’ll be a good sauce for wings/chicken/pork.
I plan to make this “cheese” sauce tomorrow. We were at Ralph’s Magnolia today and found a 16 oz jar of “Salsa con Queso” (in the area of the store that has all the salsa/hot sauces/diced chiles/etc.) for about $4.50, so you do not need to buy a huge can of the stuff or use the Velveeeeeeetah whatever it is (mostly oil I think). We are going to make bison burgers on the grill (gree-oh as my newphew sez) and toast some baguettes from Deux to use as our buns (Deus also has nice burger buns for sale…they are quite good, but the baguettes….oh-my-heaven-and-earth they are!!!).
Babycakes, Thank you for your thoughtful and specific response. I have to chuckle at the ingredients that I would otherwise deride as unhealthy and unacceptable! I will try the recipe when I get the ingredients together. A delightful voyage into sinful, unhealthy eating of yesteryear!
Baby cakes- More precisely, thank you from OP.
CF: Yes, the ingredients are completely unhealthy. Much of restaurant food in general is unhealthy, unless you are ordering poached carrots or steamed veggies with no butter/salt/etc. The recipe that I specified is MY close approximation of what I remember the “cheese” sauce to be. I did not work there, but even if I did that would be no guarantee that I’d know the actual recipe. Just try to make fried chicken that tastes exactly like KFC….you can get kinda/sorta/maybe close, but impossible to get spot on. BTW….one of the “secrets” to making your fried chicken taste somewhat similar to KFC is……drum roll…..white pepper!!!
Babycakes- Please let us know how the sauce turns out.
We eat at restaurants only 5 times a year as we understand their use of toxic oils, GMO ingredients etc. as they are for profit. That said, concocting something “sinfully good” on occasion is a rare treat of minimal threat. No?
ChannelFog: Okay, as requested, here is my report:
Sauce was good, but/but/but….not exactly the same as it didn’t really have that cheesy-cheese flavor that I remember. I think it would have worked had I used the actual nacho cheese sauce that we all know and “love” from baseball stadiums, 7-11 nacho cheese pumps, and so on. It’s kind of like buying a box of off-brand mac-n-cheese and the cheese sauce (that comes in the little packet) does not and never tastes as good as the Kraft brand original….never. The nacho cheese sauce I purchased already had chiles in it, so I did not add my own….mistake. Bottom line is that no one (that is no one who minds eating less-than-healthy stuff like this) will complain about the sauce rendered from the above recipe. However, it might be a stretch for a connoisseur of the cheese sauce from Aloha Burger. Anyway, I have more than half the jar of sauce left, so I will make nachos later on and tell people that I am serving ‘Aloha Nachos”….will add some pineapple tidbits as a topper.
I loved Aloha Burger. They had the best burgers I’ve ever eaten.
Cheese sauce is easy, made one yesterday. Start with a quick roux then add your dairy liquid then your cheese. Cook onion and garlic in the butter for more flavor. Don’t forget salt
I used to go there for lunch quite a bit in the 80’s. Great burgers and wine coolers by the quart.
The honeymoon was over when I found a surprise in my large iced tea one day. I was about halfway through my drink when I found the roach nestled amongst the ice cubes. Never went back after that.
I worked there in the late 70’s and was just reminiscing about the Maui Burger the other day. Don’t forget to make it extra sloppy!
@7:35- Does Babycakes description (above) sound like that which you made way back when? Any observations or modifications?