Even though I've always found the name, "smothered pork chops," a little unsettling, it's one of my favorite southern recipes. A beautiful combination of dark, rich onion gravy covering pan-fried pork chops.
While the name may have some other more nefarious connotations, it really is quite appropriate. I mean, what else woud we use? "Covered pork chops," doesn't work. Swamped? Enveloped? Gravyfied? No, smothered pork chops is exactly what these are.
The secret to this very simple recipe is to take your time and really brown the onions well. Short of being totally black, you really can’t cook them too dark. This will give your gravy its deep, rich taste, and just as importantly, its mouth-watering color.
These are definitely going in the cookbook, so as always, if you give them a try, please let me know what you thought. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 4 large pork chops, about 1 inch thick 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 1 tablespoon butter 1 large yellow onion, sliced 4 cloves garlic, finely minced 1 rounded tablespoon flour 1 1/2 cup chicken broth 1/4 cup buttermilk 1/4 cup water 4 cups cooked rice, optional
Wow, what a crazy busy week this was! I tested and photographed 10 recipes for the cookbook, including the succotash recipe immortalized in the last video. The photo below is from the smothered pork chop recipe I did today, and I also had the video camera rolling, so stay tuned for that very delicious plate of pig soon. Have a great weekend!
UPDATE: I just posted the written recipe for this Smothered Pork Chops Recipe on my American Foods site. Enjoy!
When most of you hear the word, "succotash," you probably don't think of a delicious vegetable side dish, you probably think of Warner Brother's Sylvester the cat's catchphrase, "Sufferin' succotash!" But succotash really is a great, and very underrated recipe.
As I say in the video, this may be America's oldest vegetable recipe, coming from the Narragansett Indian word, "msÃckquatash," which according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary means "boiled corn kernels."
You can see from the photo, this is much more than that, combining an array of vegetables including corn, beans, and squash. These three ingredients were such an important source of nutrition for the Native American's they were referred to as "The Three Sisters."
The way they cultivated these three plants together was sheer genius. The corn's stalks were perfect for the climbing vines of the bean plants. In turn, the bean's roots captured nitrogen from the air, enriching the soil, producing larger crops. But it was the third sister that really made the system so brilliant.
Squash sends out long, winding vines with large leaves that stay close to the ground. This acts as an edible ground cover, which not only kept the weeds away, but also provided shade for the corn's shallow roots. It also kept the ground moist, which helped the beans grow, which helped the corn grow higher, which made for longer bean vines/yields, etc., and so on. Who knew succotash could be so fascinating?!
Anyway, I hope you give this easy and nutritious vegetable side dish recipe a try. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon olive oil 1/2 tablespoons butter 1/2 yellow onion, diced 3 garlic cloves, minced 1 jalapeno or other small hot chili pepper, sliced 1/2 red bell pepper, diced 1/2 cup diced tomatoes 4 oz green beans, cut in 1/2-inch pieces 1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen corn 1 cup frozen baby lima beans, thawed 2 green zucchini, cubed 1/2 tsp ground cumin pinch of cayenne salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution is a new show that debuts Friday, March 26 on ABC. The series will center on Oliver's ongoing crusade to change the way modern society thinks about food and cooking, especially when it comes to children and school lunches. As someone whose blog is dedicated to encouraging people to cook more fresh foods at home, I'm very excited by this project, and hope it lives up to all the hype.
To get you in the proper revolutionary state of mind, check out this TED lecture Oliver did recently. I've always been a big fan of Jamie Oliver's cooking style, and I think it's great for someone like him to use his celebrity to take on a system so horribly broken. Enjoy!
Even though I've always found the name, "smothered pork chops," a little unsettling, it's one of my favorite southern recipes. A beautiful combination of dark, rich onion gravy covering pan-fried pork chops.
