SMOTHERED BBQ CHOPS

SMOTHERED BBQ CHOPS
2 + 2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 cup BBQ sauce
4 3/4 inch bone-in pork chops
2 small red onions, thinly sliced
2 carrots, thinly sliced on an angle
1/3 pound green beans, trimmed and cut
1/3 pound sugar snap peas, trimmed
1 1/2 cups long grain white rice
1 lemon, thinly sliced (optional)
minced parsley
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In a large skillet heat butter on medium high.
Sprinkle paprika, salt and pepper on both sides of pork chops.
Brown pork chops on both sides until browned (5-6 minutes).
Transfer to a plate.

Add remaining butter and onion to skillet and saute until tender.
With a slotted spoon remove onions to a small bowl.
Add carrots, beans, parsley and peas to skillet sauteing a few minutes.
Add rice and broth. Heat to boiling.

Move rice mixture to baking dish sprayed with PURE.
Layer pork chops over rice mixture.
Layer lemons over pork chops.
Spoon onions over lemons.
Spread BBQ sauce over all.
Cover and bake 30 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed and rice is tender.

YUMMY

PULLED PORK SANDWICHES

Hello everyone. My name is Liz and I am the new host for Try A New Recipe Tuesday. I am honored to be part of such an awesome group of bloggers. I have my own blog, The Flowering Dogwood, come on over, browse and let me know you stopped by.

The holidays are over and all I want to do is to NOT make a huge fuss in the kitchen. This meal is easy , with very little effort. My kind of dinner! This is a great meal that you will definitely add to your list of favorites.It is a favorite at our house. Crock pot, few ingredients and great taste. Of course you use your favorite BBQ sauce. Everyone has one! I serve the pork on buns with baked french fries and coleslaw.

PULLED PORK SANDWICHES

1 (14 ounce) can beef broth

3 pounds boneless pork ribs

1 (18 ounce) bottle barbecue sauce

Directions

Pour can of beef broth into slow cooker, and add boneless pork ribs. Cook on High heat for 4 hours, or until meat shreds easily.
Remove meat, and shred with two forks.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Transfer the shredded pork to a Dutch oven or iron skillet, and stir in barbecue sauce.
Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until heated through.
Serve on warm, toasted buns.

PORK in ORANGE SAUCE

My wonderful SIL recently returned from a cruise to Panama – lucky her! – she had a great time, but lucky me – she sent me a new cookbook of Mexican recipes. I have tried 3 recipes so far this week and we loved all 3!!!!!!!!! But, hubby all but licked his plate on this one tonight. And this recipe was soooooooooo simple! I did tweak the original recipe to suit us, but the basics are all still there.

2 pound pork tenderloin, cut into pieces
1/3 cup diced dried apricots
1 cup white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon cumin
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon red pepper
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup fresh orange juice
1/3 cup lemon juice
sliced oranges for garnish
mashed potatoes (original recipe called for mashed sweet potatoes but hubby doesn’t care for them)

In a large bowl combine vinegar, cumin, garlic, red pepper and salt.
Drop in pork cubes and make sure they are completely coated.
Cover and refrigerate 6 hours or more.

Remove pork pieces from marindae, but reserve the marinade.
Pat the meat dry.*
In a heavy skillet, melt the butter.
Brown the pork cubes until golden.
Add the reserved marinade and bring to a boil.
Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until pork is tender (30 minutes or so).
Stir in orange and lemon juices last 15 minutes.

*Next time I will brown the pork first and then marinade so there is a bit of a crusty edge.

NOTE: Any time you marinade in vinegar, meat will take longer to brown.

PORK FRIED RICE

This dish is best prepared in advance, there are lots of parts to prepare.

PORK FRIED RICE & ORANGE HONEY CHICKEN

4 cups cooked rice, cold

1 1/2 cups cooked pork, diced

2 eggs, slightly beaten

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup diced carrots

1/2 red pepper, diced

3 green onions, sliced thin

2 tablespooons soy sauce

1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil

4 tablespoons butter

Bring a 12 inch skillet to a medium high heat.
Melt butter.
Add peppers, carrots and onions.
Add the pork pieces and heat through.
Add the rice and stir fry until well coated.
Arrange the rice mixture around the outer edges of the pan.
Add eggs into the center quickly frying up the pieces and mixing with the rice mixture.
Add the soy sauce and sesame oil, blending well.

I served it with ORANGE HONEY CHICKEN and it was an awesome combo – everyone had seconds!

COOKBOOK SUNDAY

Stuffed Bell Peppers Italiano

It’s Fire Day Friday but you can make this one in your oven too. It’s just not as fun.

I was sitting at my desk at work reading government guidance about performing IT risk assessments (exciting stuff, really) when the idea of this dish popped into my head. I love stuffed bell peppers but they have always been the traditional ones stuffed with a rice and beef/chorizo mixture.

But before I get into that, check out the giveaway package that Robyn is running over at Grill Grrrl. As if the autographed Michael Symon book isn’t good enough, she’s throwing in all of this other great stuff! So get over there and enter.

Okay, back to my idea. I thought that I would make stuffed peppers but make them with an Italian influence. Kind of like a lasagna inside of a bell pepper. Since this was a total off the wall idea, I only made two of them in case they sucked and made our Italian Skillet Slop for the boys.

Stuffed Bell Peppers Italiano
Source: NibbleMeThis

2 ea green bell peppers
5 oz Italian sausage
½ cup ditalini pasta
3-4 oz cream cheese
½ cup shredded mozzarella
1 tsp basil, dried
¾ cup marinara sauce

Cut the tops of the peppers off and remove the seeds. Parboil them for 3 minutes, remove and drain.

Cook the pasta and drain. Ditalini is a small pasta (see pic below) which works perfect for this dish.

Brown the sausage.

Mix the cream cheese, mozzarella, and basil together. I would have used ricotta cheese instead if I had it but the cream cheese worked.

Now assemble your stuffed peppers in layers like this.

A few tablespoons of pasta, about 1/4th of the cheese mixture in each of the two peppers, the sausage, and a few tablespoons of the marinara sauce. Feel free to use your favorite marinara or jarred marinara. I made a quick one.

Quick Pseudo Marinara
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can diced tomatoes
½ tsp black pepper
½ tsp kosher salt
1 tsp oregano, dried
¼ cup marsala wine (I was out of red)

Sauté the garlic for 1-2 minutes in the butter and oil. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for 30-45 minutes. I hit them with the immersion blender about 30 minutes in.

Set your grill up for an indirect heat cook at 350f (or put in a 350f oven). Put the peppers in a casserole dish or individual baking dishes. I wasn’t sure how this would turn out so I put some of the cheese mixture on one of them and was going to add the other one later.

I baked them on the Big Green Egg for about 20 minutes. Then I added the cheese mix to the other one, put the rest of the marinara sauce in the boats, and tossed in the last of the cheese mix on that.

Meanwhile, Alexis was cooking another garlic bread roll on her Egg. We got this recipe from Rex at Savory Reviews. We had to bend it because it was too big to fit on the pizza stone. That didn’t affect taste at all.

I cooked the peppers for about another 15-20 minutes and then took them off to serve.

These worked great as a concept and was a very good dish. But this is more of a technique than a recipe. You could do the same idea with any of your favorite pasta and sauces and it would come out wonderful. Just doing this technique with leftover spaghetti would be great too.

SWEET & SOUR GLAZED PORK CHOPS

We normally grill these outside, but it was really windy the day I planned these so I decided to try them on the stove and was pleasantly surprised. The taste was similar but unique without the smoke flavor.

SWEET & SOUR PORK CHOPS

4 thick boneless pork chops

2 tablespoons olive oil

sea salt and white pepper

1/3 cup balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons honey

3 + 2 tablespoons butter

fresh rosemary

Drizzle one tablespoon of olive oil on a plate.
Salt and pepper pork chops and lay in olive oil seasoned side down.
Salt and pepper tops and drizzle with remaining olive oil.
Let sit for 30 minutes.
In a small saucepan combine vinegar and honey, blending well. Cook until reduced to about 1/4 cup. Add butter and rosemary. Set aside.
Melt remaining butter in sizzling skillet.
Add pork chops and brown on both sides.
Brush on glaze and cook through.
Enjoy.

PORK CHOPS MARSALA

Remember when I researched scampi? And decided that scampi is not just for shrimp? Well, I got to thinking about how we get into cooking/eating ruts. Are you in a rut? We are sometimes even with me always trying new recipes. I started analyzing the flavors we like and those we don’t. Then I started wondering how I was going to transfers those like into new recipes. I realized I don’t really need “new” recipes, I just need to “trade” out some ingredients. This eventually led to me thinking about Chicken Marsala, one of our very favorite flavor combos. Adn that Marsala is not just for chicken.

To get you started here is a little Marsala history.

Marsala Wine Information
Marsala is the west section of Sicily, the island near the foot end of Italy. In 1798 the Sicilians managed to substitute their own wines in place of the standard rum in an English naval shipment. In those seafaring days, something had to be done to wine to allow it to last the long ocean journeys. Brandy was added to allow the wine to last longer, and to be more resistant to temperature changes. These were called “fortified wines”.

Once the British had a taste of Marsala, demand grew quickly. In the United States during Prohibition, things became even more interesting. The typical Marsala bottles made the wine look like medicine. People found that getting Marsala was less risky than other types of wine. While not as popular now, it is still used quite frequently as a cooking wine in Italian dishes.

Marsala uses the following grapes:

white skin/berry grapes: Grillo, Catarratto, Inzolia and Damaschino for golden and amber Marsala
dark red skin/berry grapes: Pignatello, Calabrese, Nerello Mascalese, Nero d’Avola for ruby red

Marsala is made in the “solera” tradition – a melding of years. First, a keg is filled with wine from the current vintage of grapes. Subsequent years with similar tastes are placed in kegs above the first. When liquid is drawn out of the bottom (oldest) keg, it is refreshed with liquid from the next keg up, and so on. In this manner, the taste remains the same throughout the cycle, and every bottle you get has (potentially) some liquid from the very first vintage.

Types of Marsala

    * Fine: 17° alcohol, aged >1 yr
    * Superiore: 18° alcohol, aged >2 years
    * Superiore Riserva: 18° alcohol, aged 4 years
    * Vergine Soleras: 18° alcohol, aged 5 years

Marsala was traditionally served between the first and second courses. It is now also served, chilled, with Parmesan (stravecchio), Gorgonzola, Roquefort and other, spicy cheeses.

Marsala Substitutions
I regularly get email from casual wine drinkers who come across a recipe for chicken marsala or veal marsala and want to know what other alcohol they can substitute instead. I *love* both of these dishes. Here’s the issue. Imagine you had a recipe for making orange juice and you wanted to substitute lemons instead. They’re both citrus! However they taste very different. So you’re no longer making orange juice, you’re making lemon juice now.

The same thing is true for dishes with marsala. It has a very specific dish. Sure, you could make chicken with chardonnay, or chicken with cabernet, and they might be tasty. But they are no longer chicken marsala. The flavor will be completely different. So at that point you could call it “chicken with wine” and be happy. If you want chicken marsala, then you need to find marsala, so that it tastes like marsala.

Pretty much any regular wine shop will have marsala bottles on their shelves, along with the port and sherry. Again marsala doesn’t taste like port and sherry 🙂 But that’s the type of wine it is. So I highly recommend that you take a run to your local wine shop, grab a bottle of marsala and enjoy! It lasts a long time because it’s fortified. Chicken and veal marsala are really yummy, so you’ll want to make it several times. It’s one of those staples of cooking, like having lemon juice in your fridge.

If you have serious issues with alcohol, I’m afraid there is not a non-alcoholic marsala flavoring. Note that any recipe calling for “Marsala” means this wine. Marsala is the name for this wine.

Sweet vs Dry Marsala
I get emails from cooks asking which they should use – sweet or dry marsala – in a recipe. It’s like saying you have a recipe which says to use cheddar cheese and you have mild cheddar and sharp cheddar and medium cheddar, and which should you use. You can use any of them. They are all cheddar, they will all provide a cheddar flavor. If you like mild cheddar better, you might go with that. But if you’re not a cheese fanatic you might not even really notice the subtle differences between for example mild and medium cheddar flavors when they are in a dish.

So it definitely is to taste 🙂 Do you like sweetish chicken dishes? Do you like non-sweetish chicken dishes? Are you even going to notice the difference which is that kind of subtle variation? Who knows, you might not even be able to taste any difference since both are going to taste “like marsala”. Undoubtedly you’re not going to make chicken or veal marsala only once in your life if you like it, you’ll make it every few weeks. So make it one time with the sweet and one time with the dry, and see if you can even notice any difference. Or, I suppose, have someone else add in the marsala and not tell you which they used and see if you can guess 🙂 It might be you can’t even tell which is being used, in which case it’s not worth worrying about. Use whichever one you have more of.

Storing Marsala
Marsala is a fortified wine – this means they add hard alcohol to it. This also means that, just like you can keep opened (sealed) bottles of vodka and rum on your shelves, you can also keep an opened bottle of marsala around. Yes, the flavor will gently deteriorate over time, but it won’t go from wonderful tasting to awful tasting in three days. You probably won’t even notice the flavor difference after a month or two. Still, I’d suggest drinking it all within three to four months (or cooking dishes with it). When you cook with a flavor, you get a really concentrated version of that flavor. So you want really tasty, yummy marsala flavors – not sort of stale, stagnant marsala flavors. I am very much a fan of eating food that you really enjoy, and savoring the flavors!

Marsala is fortified, so you do NOT have to store it in a fridge or take any special measures. Just keep it in a cool, dark area like any other oil or wine. Marsala will not “go bad” – it won’t turn dangerous to drink – but its flavors will fade over time.

PORK CHOPS Marsala

1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
4 boneless pork chops – 1/4-1/2 inch thick
2 slices thick bacon, diced
4 tablespoons butter
1 small white onion
2 cups frozen green beans
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup Marsala wine
1/4 cup sweet cooking sherry

With a mortar and pestle grind the oregano. Sift together the flour, salt, pepper and oregano. Coat the chicken pieces well.
In a heavy skillet, heat butter. Add the bacon pieces and stir fry for several minutes. Slice onion into rings and separate. When butter is hot, saute’ onions until just caramelized. Add the mushrooms and green beans and saute until cooked through. Set aside and place pork chops in skillet and brown on both sides about 5 minutes per side over medium heat. Remove and set aside.
To the skillet, add the wine, lemon juice and sherry. Stir, reduce heat, and cook for about 10 minutes until the sauce is partially reduced and begins to thicken. Return chicken breasts to the skillet. Spoon sauce over the chicken. Cover and cook over low heat for about 5-10 minutes or until chicken is done.

SWEDISH MEATLOAF

MEATLOAF
1 Jumbo egg
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 large slice white bread, crusts removed, and bread torn into 1-inch pieces
8 ounces ground pork, double ground
8 ounces ground beef, double ground
1 medium onion, grated or minced
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
Olive Oil, heavy coat

Whisk egg and cream together in small bowl. Stir in bread and set aside to soak.
Blend hamburger & pork, onion, nutmeg, allspice, pepper, brown sugar, and salt smooth and uniform.
Using fork, mash bread mixture until no large dry bread chunks remain.
Add mixture to beef mixture and blend until well mixed.
Form meat loaves.
Bake 45-60 minutes.
During the last 10-15 minutes prepare the sauce.

SAUCE
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons juice from 1 lemon
Table salt and freshly ground black pepper

Melt butter, add flour and cook, stirring constantly with whisk, until flour is light brown.
Slowly whisk in broth.
Add brown sugar and bring to simmer.
Reduce heat to medium and cook until sauce is reduced to about 1 cup, about 5 minutes.
Stir in cream and return to simmer.
Add meatballs back to sauce and simmer, turning occasionally, until heated through, about 5 minutes.
Stir in lemon juice; season with salt and pepper to taste and serve over noodles.

PEACH BBQ RIBS

3 pounds cut spareribs
1 can Peach Comstock*
1 cup Sweet Baby Ray’s hickory smoke BBQ sauce**
Juice of 1 lemon
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon Frank’s hot sauce

Sprinkle ribs with salt and pepper; rub well.
Place in baking dish and top tightly with foil, shiny side in.
Bake at 400 degrees for 1 hour, reduce heat to 375 degrees for an additional 30 minutes.
Pour off any excess liquid.
In the meantime pour peach Comstock into a food processor and puree.
Add BBQ sauce, hot sauce and lemon juice. Pulse until well blended.
Remove from oven, brush meat with sauce, turn, brush sauce on other side.
Bake at 375 degrees with foil loose and open 30 minutes.

*Cherry works great too!

**or any other favorite brown sugar based sauce – I’m allergic to mustard so Sweet Baby Ray’s is about the only prepared sauce on the market I can use. I really prepare to make sauce fresh.

BOHEMIAN PORK CHOPS aka PORK CHOPS IN BEER GRAVY and a drum roll please…

Let’s start the day off with our big CSN giveaway winner. Drum roll please…

The winner is Julie from Mommie Cooks!

Congratulations!

This was from another scrap of recipe I found in gram’s things. I don’t know if she ever made it, but pork chops and beer in the same sentence got hubby’s interest and so we had some fun experimenting with this recipe.

BOHEMIAN PORK CHOPS aka PORK CHOPS IN BEER GRAVY

4-6 thick boneless pork chops

1 small onion, cut into thin rings

1 stalk celery, chopped

3 tablespoons flour

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons butter

2/3 cup water

1 beer ~ your favorite flavor

In a large skillet, melt butter.
Brown pork chops, generously salting and peppering.
Remove pork chops, keep warm.
Saute’ onion and celery until soft and translucent.
Add flour, stirring until golden.
Add water, stirring until well blended.
Add beer and simmer until begins to thicken.
Add pork chops back in and heat through.

Grilling Tip: Coarse Language

When it comes to grilling and fire roasting, sometimes being “less refined” is better. I like to use much more coarse ingredients in my rubs. I just think that the more intense heat of live fire cooking brings out the rich flavors of chunky ingredients that ground spices just can’t deliver.

Take for example this recipe for Cajun Pork Roast from the National Pork Board.

2-pound pork loin roast
3 tablespoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons thyme
2 teaspoons oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Combine all seasonings and rub well over all surfaces of roast. Place roast in shallow pan and roast in 350 degree F. oven for about 45 minutes, until internal temperature on a thermometer reads 150 degrees F. Remove roast from oven; let rest until temperature reaches 160 degrees F, about 10 minutes before slicing.

The first time I ever made this, I just used powdered spices and it was very good. But since then, I began to adjust it using coarser ingredients. The slight adjustments make a much heartier and more flavorful dish.

3 tablespoons paprika

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (use 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes instead)

1 tablespoon garlic powder (use 1/2 Tbsp of garlic powder and 1/2 Tbsp of dried minced garlic)

2 teaspoons thyme (use fresh that was dried for a few days and then crumbled)

2 teaspoons oregano (use fresh that was dried for a few days and then crumbled)

1/2 teaspoon salt (use the most coarse grain you can find)

1/2 teaspoon white pepper

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (fresh ground)

These little adjustments give you a rub that instead of being a dusty powder, looks like this…

It adds more texture…

And amplifies the flavors of the final dish.

So the next time you are grilling out, give this tip a try. Look at your dry rub ingredients and consider how you can make them “chunkier”. I think you’ll be glad you did.

[Please excuse this rehash of a dish I’ve made several times before. My outdoor kitchen is being demolished and rebuilt this week.]

Category: PORK

PORK CHOPS Marsala