8 posts tagged “pork chops”
I have been absolutely exhausted lately. I've been busy at home and on the weekends, and I've been working at a different office (that takes longer to get to/from) during the week. I've been neglecting blogs (including my own!) and emails, and I apologize.
Normally I have some sort of rambling at the beginning of my posts but today you're getting just the food! No rambling (for those of you who bother to even read my rambling, that is).
We had these chops last week so I can only hope that I got the measurements right because it's been a while. But, if I were to make these from scratch today this is how I would make them so I assume this is how I made them last week :) As you know, I am a smoked gouda fanatic and while it lends itself to many dishes and flavors, I think smoked gouda pairs best with pork. And when you add caramelized onions, mushrooms and thyme, the complementary flavors only enhance. Enjoy!
Pork Chops with Smoked Gouda, Caramelized Onions and Mushrooms
Serves 2
2 pork chops
1 oz. shredded or sliced smoked gouda
1 tsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. butter
1 yellow or vidalia onion, cut in half and sliced
2 sprigs thyme
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup cremini mushrooms, sliced
2 Tbsp. dry sherry or marsala
1/3 cup beef broth
salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 350. Slice a pocket into each pork chop and fill it with the gouda. Season the chops with salt and pepper. Heat an ovenproof skillet over medium heat and add the oil. Sear the pork chops for about a minute per side, just to brown them. Move the chops to a baking dish and cook in the oven until just slightly underdone.
Meanwhile, melt the butter to the skillet in which you pan-fried the chops, over low heat. Stir in the onions and thyme and cook over low heat until golden brown, stirring occasionally--about 15 minutes. Add the garlic and the mushrooms and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes.
Increase the heat to medium high and add the sherry. Scrape up all the browned bits from the bottom of the pan and cook until the sherry is almost completely evaporated, a couple minutes. Stir in the broth and cook it for another couple minutes to reduce it, slightly, too. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the pork chops back into the skillet, spooning the onions and sauce over them. Place the skillet in the oven for about 5 minutes or until the pork chops have cooked and the sauce has thickened slightly.
About once a month, I find myself with a couple of thawed pork chops and no ideas for them. See, I am not crazy about pork chops. I will definitely eat them, but they're not my favorite. My husband, on the other hand, loves pork chops...which is why I try to make them about once a month.
After a day out in Chicago's "wintry mix" of snow, rain, wind and ice, I was definitely not up for making a run to the grocery store, so I had to work with what I had on hand--which wasn't much. I figured I would marinate the pork chops in something simple, and then remembered a marinade Giada used on her show for drumettes, so I decided to use that. I have made this recipe with chicken before here and it's great.
After marinating the chops, I pan fried them for a couple minutes to caramelize before putting them in the oven. I actually preferred this marinade with the pork over the chicken! I definitely recommend the pan frying because the caramelization gives them extra flavor and makes them so good.
We had this with some brown rice and a really simple recipe for golden-crusted brussels sprouts. It was so easy and turned out delicious! I used grana padano for the cheese.
Balsamic Pork Chops
adapted from Giada De Laurentiis
2-3 pork chops (I used center cut, boneless)
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 garlic cloves, smashed
1 Tbsp. canola oil
pinch of red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
In a ziplock bag, combine the vinegar, honey, brown sugar, soy sauce, rosemary and garlic. Shake/squeeze the bag to dissolve the brown sugar. Add a little salt and pepper to taste. Place the pork chops in the bag and massage the marinade into them. Marinate the chops for 3-4 hours.
Preheat the oven to 400*
Heat the canola oil in an oven-proof skillet over medium heat. Add the pork chops (reserving the marinade) and cook for about 2-3 minutes per side, until they caramelize. Place the skillet in the oven and cook for about 15 minutes or until pork chops reach an internal temperature of 150.
Meanwhile, add the reserved marinade and a pinch of red pepper flakes to a small saucepan. Bring the marinade to a boil, then reduce the heat slightly and cook until thickened (the 15 minutes the pork chops are in the oven should do it).
Brush the cooked pork chops with the marinade and serve.
Another day, another pork chop.
We are pretty limited with both our freezer and fridge selections at the moment, so I needed something simple and with common ingredients for tonight's dinner. I decided to just use Giada's extremely basic, easy recipe for parmesan pork chops. I used romano instead of parmesan because that is the cheese I always have on hand (I prefer it to parmesan). These were great. Nothing absolutely amazing but they come together very quickly and are an extremely easy weeknight meal.
I made a really simple salad of baby romaine and grape tomatoes tossed with lemon vinaigrette. All I did for that was crush a clove of garlic, squeeze the juice out of one lemon, and add extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. I let it sit while I made the rest of the meal to marry the flavors and plucked the garlic clove out before tossing with the greens.
Tonight we had pork chops stuffed with goat cheese and spinach, and couscous pilaf with carrots/celery/mushrooms/onions/garlic.
Notice anything similar to last night's meal? Oh, right...pretty much the same ingredients. Originally the reason I bought carrots and celery was to make a beef stew. Well, then I realized we were going out of town this weekend and the leftovers would go to waste. Besides, the weather was MUCH hotter than I thought it would be this week, so not really weather for soup or stew.
Stuffed tenderloin, chicken, flank steak, chops, etc. are always my "go to" when I need a dinner idea because you can fill them with whatever you have sitting in your fridge. And as you know, there is always goat cheese sitting in my fridge :)
Pork chops stuffed with goat cheese and spinach
2 boneless pork chops
1 Tbsp olive oil, divided
1/4 cup diced onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup fresh spinach, chopped or torn
Italian seasoning
salt and pepper
1-2 oz. goat cheese
Preheat oven to 350.
Heat a skillet over medium heat and add .1 tsp. olive oil. Cook onion until translucent. Stir in garlic until fragrant, and then add spinach to wilt. Take off heat.
Stir in goat cheese, salt and pepper and Italian seasoning to taste.
Pound chops slightly and slit a pocket in the side of each chop. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and stuff with equal parts of the spinach mixture.
Heat the remaining 2 tsp. olive oil in a skillet. When hot, brown the pork chops for about 2 minutes per side.
Move skillet to oven and finish cooking, until internal temperature is about 150, around 15 minutes.
1 tsp olive oil Heat olive oil and butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add onions, celery, carrots and mushrooms and saute until tender. Add garlic, stirring until fragrant. Pour in chicken stock. Bring to a boil. Add couscous and stir to combine. Cover, and turn off the heat. Let stand about five mintues. Fluff with a fork and serve.
Veggie Couscous Pilaf
1 tsp butter
1/4 cup onion, diced
2 oz. mushrooms, sliced or diced
1 small carrot, peeled and diced
1 rib celery, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup chicken stock (or amount required by your box of couscous)
1/2 cup couscous
Tonight I decided to try Tyler Florence's smothered pork chop recipe since we still had a couple pork chops to get rid of, as well as some buttermilk. They turned out great!
Because I cannot follow a recipe...well, ever, I did make a couple small changes. I omitted the onion powder (I don't really use it, so I rarely have it on hand) and saute a few tablespoons of chopped onion in the pan after the chops had browned and before I put the flour in the pan. I didn't actually measure out the flour/spice mixture, either. I also used boneless chops, since that's what we had in the freezer.
We ate these with buttermilk mashed potatoes and roasted green beans.
You know we are low on groceries when the pork chops come out. Like I said in a previous post I really am not all that crazy about pork chops. Clearly, we are in need of a trip to the grocery store :) I decided to just do a rub and grill the pork chops. To make matters even easier, I didn't even use my own rub!
This is not really much of a recipe, but I thought I would post it anyway in case people needed ideas for a quick and easy (but still flavorful) meal.
I used a jerk rub for the chops. Obviously you could make your own jerk rub but I had some leftover from a trip to St. Martin, so I decided to use it. I just patted the pork chops with a paper towel, and then rubbed the seasoning into both sides. Put them on an oil-sprayed grill, cooked till internal temp was about 140.
I also decided to make some potato/veggie skewers. These didn't turn out too visually appealing since they didn't have much color. I thought I had some grape tomatoes, but it turns out they didn't look so hot. For these, I blitzed a clove of garlic with some fresh lemon juice (about a tablespoon; lime or orange juice would work!), oil, honey (about 2 Tbsp), oregano, thyme, salt and pepper. In the meantime, I halved some baby yukon potatoes and boiled them until *just* fork tender. Tossed those with some green peppers, mushrooms and pinapple chunks into the honey mixture. Threaded them on skewers, and tossed those on the grill, too, brushing with the marinade a couple times.
Well, originally this was going to be a rest-of-the-week update. Then it was going to be a weekend update. Now it's Tuesday. Oops. At any rate, here are a few meals we had this past, err...6 days or so.
Tonight we had pork chops with some mushroom sauce/gravy. I am not huge on pork chops, but you can pair pretty much anything with mushrooms and/or some sort of booze and I will be content. Oh, and we are down to only 2 or 3 things left in the freezer and I have to make it last until we can go grocery shopping this weekend.
I made some roasted asparagus, too (you can probably tell by now we love roasted asparagus. If there is ever an asparagus scare like there was a spinach scare, we will probably stop getting our daily dose of veggies).
So, here is what I did for 3 boneless, center cut pork chops (total uncooked weight was just over a pound, so they weren't too big).
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup diced onions
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 sprig of thyme
1-1.25 lbs. of pork chops
salt and pepper
1/3 cup dry sherry (something you'd drink, not just cook with)
1/2 cup beef broth
1 tsp corn starch, mixed with 2-3 tsp water
Preheat oven to 350.
In a dutch oven, melt butter. Add thyme, onion and garlic and saute until tender. Sprinkle salt and pepper on pork chops, and add to dutch oven. Brown on both sides, but don't cook through (about 2 minutes per side). Remove from pan.
Add mushrooms to dutch oven and saute a minute or two. Add sherry to deglaze. Cook on high heat to reduce the sherry and scrape up the brown bits as it cooks down until almost evaporated, about 5 minutes.
Add beef broth and bring to a boil. Add pork chops back to dutch oven, spooning some sauce on top. Put dutch oven, covered, into oven. Bake for 25 minutes. Uncover, and bake an additional 10.
Remove pork chops from dutch oven and put the pan back on the stove. Bring to a low boil and add corn starch/water mixture, simmering until thickened. Salt & pepper to taste.
The other day we had a Mexican lasagna/enchilada casserole/whatever you would like to call it. Basically, just layered whole wheat tortillas, enchilada sauce, seasoned beef/black bean mixture, and some cheese. Cover with some foil and pop it in the oven for about 30 minutes at 350. Much easier than rolling enchiladas (well, at least for me, a person who manages to totally dump out the fillings every time she tries to put them seam-down in a pan).
OK, well that concludes the update, apparently, because my camera battery has now died and won't allow me to import any more pics. So, I guess I will add some more info later.
Tonight we had one of my favorite, super easy dinners: roasted chicken leg quarters and potatoes. It takes about an hour to cook, but under 10 minutes to throw together.
First, peel and quarter (or eighth) the potatoes (I use 2 small or medium russets). Then, add some extra virgin olive oil and the juice of half a lemon to a baking dish. Add the potatoes and the chicken leg quarters to the baking dish, and turn them around to coat them with the EVOO (sorry) and lemon juice. Then, add salt, pepper and dried oregano to the chicken and potatoes. Flip them, and salt, pepper & oregano the other sides. Add about 1/3 cup of chicken broth to the pan (so it just covers the bottom of the pan, about 1/4" or so standing). Squeeze the rest of the lemon over the whole thing. Bake it for about an hour at 400*. Check on it 1-2 times to add chicken broth as necessary or baste the chicken with the juices.
For the last 12 minutes the chicken was cooking, I threw some asparagus in the oven. On a baking sheet, just toss the spears in a little EVOO, add some salt and pepper and roast for 10-15 minutes depending on how done you want them.
Sorry for the lack of pictures of the following, but let's just say both were made on hurried/bad nights.
Last night I made Giada's thimbles and mushrooms. They were just eh. Admittedly I used half and half instead of cream but I don't think that had anything to do with it. They just didn't have quite enough flavor and I even added a garlic clove. I also flattened some chicken breast, lightly floured it and cooked it in an olive oil/butter mixture to add to the pasta.
I also made Sara Moulton's stuffed pork chops a few days ago. They were GREAT, especially considering I am not a huge pork chop fan.
4 double-cut pork chops
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1/2 pound fresh Italian sausage, diced
1 slice prosciutto, minced
1 slice fresh mozzarella, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Pinch salt and pepper
String, for tying
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup finely chopped yellow onion
1/4 cup butter
1 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
With a pairing knife, cut a pocket in the rounded side of each chop. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, sausage, prosciutto, mozzarella, garlic, and salt and pepper. Stuff each chop with the mixture and sew or tie them closed with string.
Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, pat the chops dry then place them in the pan. Brown on both sides, about 3 minutes per side. Remove the pork chops and set them aside in a roasting pan.
Add the onions, butter, white wine, and chicken broth to the skillet. Cook over medium heat, stirring, for 6 to 8 minutes. Add them to the pan with the pork chops. And bake for 1 hour. Remove the string before serving, and drizzle the pork chops with pan juices once plated.
My modifications
Crushed good croutons instead of using breadcrumbs.
Added mushrooms to the stuffing.
Used smoked gouda instead of mozzarella.
Left out the sausage (didn't have any)
Happy eating :)
