7-39: Pork Chops with Broccoli and Leek

7-39: Pork Chops with Broccoli and Leek

Looking for a way to use up some winter vegetables? Maybe your veggie box is heavy with leeks and broccoli these days–if so, maybe give 7-39: Pork Chops with Broccoli and Leek a try. It’s got big “we have Chinese food at home” energy.

If malls were still a thing, you could probably find something similar at a generic Chinese/pan-Asian restaurant in the half-empty food court.

If you want to round out your combo plate for the full experience, you could make some 8-25: Stir-Fried Beef or 11-6: Sweet and Sour Shrimp to go with it. Maybe throw in some 6-39: Chicken Pot Stickers or 1-15: Chinese Spring Rolls on the side?


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7-31: Lime Cayenne Pork Chops

7-31: Lime Cayenne Pork Chops

In these trying times (are you tired of hearing that yet?), it’s important to make the food you have go as far as you can, and to reduce the amount of food being wasted. Even before “the Rona“, I’ve been spending many a Saturday (or Sunday) meal-prepping for the upcoming week, which has brought down our grocery bills (and our waistlines, but apparently not as quickly).

7-31: Lime Cayenne Pork Chops was part of a “pork chop” meal-prep week, prepared in tandem with 7-53: Cider-Braised Pork Chops and served with some mixed roasted potatoes courtesy of the CSA box. It’s “meat and potatoes”, but maybe with a healthier twist?

My mom apparently made this back in November 1993, and it was “good” and “easy”. I’m not sure who ranked it as such (since she doesn’t eat pork), but we’ll go with that recommendation.


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7-53: Cider-Braised Pork Chops

7-53: Cider-Braised Pork Chops

I’m working through a HUGE backlog right now, so you’re currently getting recipes that I cooked last fall–case in point, 7-53: Cider-Braised Pork Chops. This is more of a fall/autumn-type recipe (when fresh cider is in season), but don’t let that hold you back from your cider-braised, pork-scented dreams.

There’s a TON of pork chop recipes in this book–I feel like every time I think I’ve got them all, another one pops up. If you like pork chops, check out 7-28: Pork Chops with Rosemary, 7-9: Hunter’s Style Pork Chops, or 7-26: Maple-Glazed Pork Chops for just a few examples.


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7-51: Butterflied Pork Chops

7-51: Butterflied Pork Chops

Learning a new technique can be a lot of fun. This slicing technique demonstrated in 7-51: Butterflied Pork Chops is new to me, but the final product really speaks for itself. The larger surface area creates more crispy, golden brown crust.

I love the place settings in the background of the image below. The jar of mustard, the frothy beer and crusty bread really set the scene in which you’d want to eat this dish. 

From previous posts, I’ve learned how to put together a pan sauce from fat drippings, milk, and garlic. The base sauce gets enhanced with some acid from the Dijon mustard, the green flavor of the parsley, and the classic standby combo, salt and pepper, fill out the rest of the flavors in the sauce.


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7-17: Piquant Pork Chops

7-17: Piquant Pork Chops

Oh boy, yet another pork chops recipe. 7-11: Piquant Pork Chops tries to stand out by boasting a fruity, spicy take on the standard pork-chop-with-pan-sauce entries that have already been covered at length throughout this project.

I think it’s a bit hyperbolic to insist that just adding a “new” spice or sauce to pork chops radically changes it as a dish, but I suppose that for some people it can be a big deal to experience new things outside of the regular old tried-and-true.


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7-23: Pork Chops with Tarragon

7-23: Pork Chops with Tarragon

Pan frying pork chops is not the easiest method for cooking pork chops. It is really easy to over cook pork chops that way, but 7-23: Pork Chops with Tarragon came out “just right”.

These pork chops are pan fried and the sauce is added to the pan, drippings and all at the end. Cooking the sauce and meat together creates a flavorful sauce.


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7-9: Hunter’s-Style Pork Chops

7-9: Hunter’s-Style Pork Chops

Back when I made 7-55: Sunday Pork Stew, I had mentioned that I was intending on making a different recipe, but that I didn’t have the mushrooms to make it. This recipe, 7-9: Hunter’s-Style Pork Chops, was the recipe I was intending to make.

EDIT: This seems to be a popular recipe–it wasn’t one of my favorites, but I hope you enjoy! If you want to know more about this site/me, read this. Thanks for visiting!

Hunter’s-style pork chopsseems to be a thing, although I’ve never heard of it before this book. Most recipes out there cite it as a “comfort food”, although if they’re already using the word “bland” in and around the recipe (see the second line above on the card), don’t expect anything avant garde.


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7-28: Pork Chops with Rosemary

7-28: Pork Chops with Rosemary

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.


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7-2: Pork Chops with Tomatoes

7-2: Pork Chops with Tomatoes

Okay. This one sounds weird. It looks weird too. But you know what? It actually worked out okay. I had some green beans from the CSA box that desperately needed to be used, so here’s what we did with them.

Pork chops + tomatoes + green beans + sliced cheese sounds odd. Book 1, Group 2 (Main Courses), Subgroup 7 (Pork) gives us 7-2: Pork Chops with Tomatoes. I had pasta and salad ready on the stand-by in case this went south, but luckily I didn’t need them.


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7-26: Maple-Glazed Pork Chops

7-26: Maple-Glazed Pork Chops

Finally–something that’s not chicken. The first pork recipe we’ll cover here is 7-26: Maple-Glazed Pork Chops.🍁

My mom was NOT a pork eater and I grew up quasi-Jewish, so there wasn’t a lot of pork being cooked in my childhood, spare the occasional ham steak or rack of ribs here and there at my dad’s request.

The key here is to make sure you use REAL maple syrup, not table syrup. Big difference.


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