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I'm not much of a cook, but pork is my wife's least favorite meat, so if I want it, I cook it myself. I modified the following from Cook's Illustrated's "New Best Recipe" book, which is very nice but tends to favor some seriously MacGyver cooking science. I like pork, but I'm also lazy, and coddling a roux for five minutes is a monstrous PITA. Also my wife doesn't do gluten.
SMOTHERED PORK CHOPS (Elokian bastardization)
Render three strips of bacon, broken up into small chunks, in a large pan (big enough to hold two chops). Remove with a slotted spoon when they're crispy, leaving the grease behind. Use said grease to fry up two yellow onions (diced) and one or two cloves of garlic (minced, quantity depending on how much you like garlic) until they turn that lovely gunky-brown caramelized consistency. Then take them out and brown your two chops in the schputz. Browning is really tricky for me, especially with pork chops--I'm always afraid that I'll burn them. Any advice on this? Anyway, once they're browned take THEM out and deglaze with chicken broth. Deglazing, if you don't know, is when you pour on a liquid and scrape out the crud left behind after browning; that crud is full of flavor and you want it. Add a bay leaf, a teaspoon of thyme, and a smattering of parsley, then toss the pork chops back in and dump the onions on top. Then cover, reduce heat to low and braise those suckers for half an hour. Then thicken the gravy with arrowroot or flour or whatever you like. Serve over egg noodles, sprinkling with the reserved bacon bits (which should be crumbled, so you can get a bit of bacon in every bite).
That's more or less exactly how I did it last week--I'm not positive exactly how much thyme was in there. Outstanding. And if that sounds like a lot of hassle, the cookbook's version was worse. There were about three pans involved, and a roux. As I type this, I have a different pork chop recipe braising, with wine, dijon mustard, and sage. Hopefully it'll be as good as the smothered ones were.
How do you cook pork chops?
SMOTHERED PORK CHOPS (Elokian bastardization)
Render three strips of bacon, broken up into small chunks, in a large pan (big enough to hold two chops). Remove with a slotted spoon when they're crispy, leaving the grease behind. Use said grease to fry up two yellow onions (diced) and one or two cloves of garlic (minced, quantity depending on how much you like garlic) until they turn that lovely gunky-brown caramelized consistency. Then take them out and brown your two chops in the schputz. Browning is really tricky for me, especially with pork chops--I'm always afraid that I'll burn them. Any advice on this? Anyway, once they're browned take THEM out and deglaze with chicken broth. Deglazing, if you don't know, is when you pour on a liquid and scrape out the crud left behind after browning; that crud is full of flavor and you want it. Add a bay leaf, a teaspoon of thyme, and a smattering of parsley, then toss the pork chops back in and dump the onions on top. Then cover, reduce heat to low and braise those suckers for half an hour. Then thicken the gravy with arrowroot or flour or whatever you like. Serve over egg noodles, sprinkling with the reserved bacon bits (which should be crumbled, so you can get a bit of bacon in every bite).
That's more or less exactly how I did it last week--I'm not positive exactly how much thyme was in there. Outstanding. And if that sounds like a lot of hassle, the cookbook's version was worse. There were about three pans involved, and a roux. As I type this, I have a different pork chop recipe braising, with wine, dijon mustard, and sage. Hopefully it'll be as good as the smothered ones were.
How do you cook pork chops?
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