Never Do Dry Pork Chop Again [updated]
A juicy, perfectly cooked pork chop can rival a good steak, and pork chops are much cheaper than any piece of beef (other than a stew and a cheap burger). But pork chops are easy to overcook, and can scare off nervous home cooks, making it impossible for them to enjoy this incredibly tasty protein.
Welcome to Cheap Chow Week ! Food is now more expensive than it ever was, and it might seem like the only cost-effective options for you are fast food or instant ramen. But it doesn’t have to be that way. This week, we’ll show you how to buy, prepare, and eat food in a cost-effective way without sacrificing pleasure or taste.
Don’t worry – I’m not going to tell you what the sous vide secret is. While the immersion circulator will help you make amazing pork chops, anyone with the oven can make these juicy beauties. Achieving pork excellence is about two things: salting and using reverse grilled meat (cooking the meat at a low temperature until it drops 10-15 degrees below the target cooking temperature, then broiling it in a hot skillet until finished).
Brine, as you probably know, is simply soaking a piece of meat in a solution of salt water, usually with different flavors, to add flavor and moisture. You can also dry the brine and apply salt (and sometimes sugar) directly to the meat. I prefer dried turkey, but I wanted to try both methods in my mouth before eliminating wet. I also wanted to see if my new favorite thing – shio koji – could help us here.
So I bought four chops (only $ 3.50 a pound) and made four different pickles:
- A simple classic pickle made by dissolving three tablespoons of salt in one glass of water, bay leaves, three cloves of minced garlic, and a couple of juniper berries. After the salt dissolved, I let everything boil for a couple of minutes, then removed from the heat and added two glasses of cold water to cool.
- Pickled juice poured straight from the Clausen can.
- Dry brine made from three tablespoons of salt and one tablespoon of brown sugar.
- Shio koji grate the chop straight from the can. ( Find out how here .)
For the first two, I put the chops in plastic bags, then added enough liquid to cover them, sealed the bags, and put them in the refrigerator. Then I rubbed the remaining two chops with dry pickle and shio koji and set them on the wire rack (baking sheet at the bottom) in the refrigerator. I let the chops hang for four hours because that’s how long it took between putting them in the refrigerator and Offkler returning home from his union meeting.
After taking the chops out of the refrigerator, I immediately noticed the dramatic differences in their texture. The two chops in wet brine were extremely tender, almost losing their original shape, while the chops in dry brine were much harder than before. The koji chop felt much the same.
I then wiped and blotted each chop until they were as dry as I could get them, put them on a baking sheet equipped with a wire rack, and then put them in a 225 degree oven until they reached an internal temperature of 110 ℉. (This took about 25 minutes, but start at 20, especially if you are using a convection oven.) I then sautéed them over high heat in a stainless steel skillet for a few minutes on each side, along with a couple tablespoons of butter. in which I constantly soaked the chops. Once the chops reached an internal temperature of 135 ℉, I removed them from the pan, let them rest long enough to take a few pictures, and put them in my mouth.
To my surprise, a chop treated with a classic simple pickle of salt water and flavors produces the most tender, juicy and perfectly flavored chop. The pickled juice made the same juicy chop, but it tasted like pickled (surprise!). The dry salty chops were too seasoned and not as tender, but definitely not dry. The koji chop was my second favorite; it was slightly less tender and juicy than wet brine chops, but had a pleasant nutty sweetness and browned faster than any other chops. Offclair thought it tasted like breakfast pork, but was unable or unwilling to elaborate.
So, to cover again: the classic wet brine followed by a 25-minute soak in the 225 degrees oven and quick sauté are all you need for the perfect pork chops. If you don’t have a full four hours for the brine, don’t worry – even an hour in salt water solution will help, especially when combined with a reverse sear. And like the pork itself, the salt is very cheap and very good.
Updated [Jun 27, 2018 12:40 PM]: Some of you have asked me how long it takes for you to serve chops. For “normal” chops about 1 “thick, I wouldn’t last more than four or five hours in wet brine, but they can handle dry brine overnight or up to 24 hours. Thicker chops two inches or more can be coated with wet brine overnight, but I would try no more than eight hours for better texture.