7-28: Pork Chops with Rosemary is a pretty simple pork chop recipe that’s good for a quick dinner. We buy the big packs of chops from Costco, so we always have to come up with different ways to prepare them.
Along with the abundance of pork, we’ve been growing and drying our own rosemary–it’s WAY more potent and flavorful than the packaged stuff from the market. If you have to choose, go with the fresh over the dried–it’ll taste so much better.
I don’t think my mom would have ever made this, but she’s my rosemary source these days, so I suppose she’d probably dig a chicken version of this recipe.
Ingredients. Beef broth is missing from this shot, but it’ll make an appearance later. Otherwise, I think it’s all spot on.
Dredging the chops in flour, salt, & pepper.
There’s that beef broth. I rarely have beef bones, so I stick with base for the times I need beef stock.
Browning the chops, in the called-for amount of butter. In 6-40: Peppercorn Chicken Breasts, I lamented the fact that I ended up with too much butter in the pan by overcompensating. This one probably could have used a bit more than the prescribed 2 TB, but that may be due to the big chops I used (that’s a 12″ skillet).
Some more heat wouldn’t have hurt either. It’s a fine balance between “hot enough to nicely color” and “too hot, now your butter is scorched”.
The bottom ones came out better, but overall I would have liked a bit more color. Cooking them in a cast-iron rather than a non-stick would have probably improved results as well.
Here’s where the lack of butter came in–there wasn’t enough left in the pan after the chops to properly cook the onion. I ended up adding a bit of canola oil (since I had a bottle close at hand) to get them going. I also did a larger cut/amount for the onions than was asked for–I was being a bit lazy. 😉
Rosemary & broth added in–now the butter issue is less of a big deal.
Half-and-half, mustard, & cornstarch combined & mixed up.
Added all together into the sauce, along with my packet of soy sauce–I don’t use soy sauce enough to buy a bottle (we switched to liquid aminos, but it lends a different taste), so I save packets from Chinese takeout for situations such as these. 🙂
Chops go back in for about 5 minutes a side, since they’re pretty thick.
Final product, on top of some pasta shells with herbs & olive oil. It’s tough to make brown sauce/meat look super tasty, but it was pretty good. Nothing exceptional, but a good weeknight dinner option.
Grade: B+
