Category: PORK
PULLED PORK SANDWICHES
- 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
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.
- 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.
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.
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
Now assemble your stuffed peppers in layers like this.
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)
I cooked the peppers for about another 15-20 minutes and then took them off to serve.
SWEET & SOUR GLAZED PORK CHOPS
- 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
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
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!
BOHEMIAN PORK CHOPS aka PORK CHOPS IN BEER GRAVY and a drum roll please…
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.
- 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
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 nutmegCombine 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.
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!