Today I’m sharing a mouthwatering 20 minute dinner recipe: juicy pan seared pork chop served with a sweet and tangy balsamic glaze accompanied by colorful vegetables, mashed potatoes and a creamy cucumber salad on the side. That will tickle your taste buds!
The pork chop is pan roasted to perfection and while it rests the fond turns into a flavorful balsamic glaze. That turns the mundane and affordable pork chop into a dinner sensation. Bell pepper vegetables add a fresh note and the creamy mashed potatoes provide the filling side. Complemented by a crunchy cucumber salad with sour cream dressing, this is the dinner you will cook again and again.
Stick around and I’ll show you how all this comes together. Have you tried cooking a pork chop with a glaze? What’s your favorite flavor?
👉 See other Affordable Meal recipes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnVd4p2GMaVpm0sHAGPMCaww2PrORTOyl
👉 See other Quick Dinner recipes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnVd4p2GMaVq950yRl2YNhZ4QxU_qam2T
Ingredients for 4:
4 Pork Cops about 1 inch thick.
Fat/Oil for searing
1 shot of white wine
1 cup balsamic vinegar
1/3rd to 1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbs soy sauce.
1 oz coconut aminos (optional)
Salt and Pepper to taste
Cucumber Salad:
2 english cucumbers thinly sliced
Dressing:
1/2 cup sour cream
Juice of a small lemon
Salt and Pepper to taste
Maybe a dash of water to thin it down if the sour cream is very thick
Vegetable side: pan roasted vegetables. I’m using bell peppers, onions and snow peas roasted in butter with just a dash of salt, pepper and a little white wine to deglaze.
Mashed potatoes – not covered in this video.
Method:
➡️ Make a few shallow cuts along the fat edge of each pork chop. That prevents the meat from buckling in the pan.
➡️ Salt the chops liberally from both sides and set aside to let them marinade for up to half an hour
➡️ Pad your chops dry. Some moisture will have formed due to the salt.
➡️ Heat your pan – do the water drop test when using stainless.
➡️ Add a little fat/oil and add your pork chops. Sear on the first side for about 4 minutes until you have a nice crust.
➡️ Flip over. Watch the temperature, do not go over 130F to 135F. Pull out and set aside.
➡️ Deglaze your pan with the white wine, then add balsamic vinegar, soy sauce and coconut aminos if using
➡️ Add brown sugar, dissolve and let reduce on medium heat until you have a thin syrup consistency
➡️ Add in your pork chop for a minute or two to heat thru to 145 degrees core temperature
➡️ For the vegetables: cook those in a separate pan with a little butter and salt. That’s it.
Cucumber Salad:
➡️ Thinly slice the cucumber. I’d recommend to peel store bought cucumbers, if they’re from the yard and have a thin skin leave it on
➡️ Mix the dressing ingredients
➡️ Combine and let “steep” for half an hour or so. That will extract moisture from the cucumbers and make everything better.
Attributions:
some image sequences from Pexels and Pixabay.
Tags:
#porkchops #balsamicglaze #budgetdinner #recipe #fromscratch #cookingfromscratch
You do not walk away from an offer like this. Pork has always been an affordable cut, but this is just ridiculously low. Of course, this is not the kind of pork that had the free roam of the pasture. Still, it’s an affordable protein, and in times like these, if you get an excellent deal, you take it. This is episode 4 of affordable meals. We’re making a pork chop with a balsamic glaze and a couple of sides. Pull this out of the fridge at least half an hour before you’re cooking and then salt it liberally. And I mean liberally. This is about an inch thick. Just so you have some kind of reference. Once it’s salted like this, set it aside for at least half an hour. That way, the salt can actually penetrate in and extract a little bit of the moisture. For the sides, I’ve got some leftover mashed potatoes from the other day, so I’m going to reheat those and use them. And then we just need some vegetables. For some crunchy side, I opted for a cucumber salad. Perfect side for this kind of dish. Let’s start with the cucumber salad. If they’re from your own yard and have a thin skin, I would use them with the skin. These are storebought and definitely treat it with something. So, I’m just going to pull the skin off. I’m using a mandolin. Of course, you could just use a knife to cut them up. I like a mandolin because that gives you a very consistent slice. I’m thinking this is a perfect slice. It’s about a 16th of an inch. There’s our sliced cucumbers. Now, we need a quick dressing to go with this. Cucumbers pair well with dill. I didn’t have any available, so I’m not going to use any, but feel free to chop in some fresh dill or some fresh mint, for example. The base of my dressing is sour cream and lemon. A couple grinds of pepper or a couple more. good amount of salt. Cucumbers always like salt. When I’m working with sour cream for a salad dressing, I usually add a tiny bit of water. So, maybe just a tablespoon’s worth. And then see where it goes. It depends on the consistency of the sour. Good amount of sour cream here. And now you just stir to combine. The cucumbers will bleed out a little bit of liquid once you hit them with the salty dressing. Cucumbers are, after all, like 96% water. So go a little bit firmer than you would like the dressing to be in the end. Stir to combine. Then set it aside while you’re working on the rest because cucumber salad wants to sit a little before you eat it. I have a few pieces of bell peppers left that need to go. So this is a perfect opportunity. I just cut those into slices. There’s some snow peas I have left from some Asian recipe I did the other day. And then maybe half an onion will do. Cut out the root end at an angle. Cut out the top at an angle. And then you can cut nice veggies. And that’s already the vegetable prep. Time to get cooking. Let’s start with a preheated pan. You know your pan is the right temperature when you see the so-called light and frost effect. So you take a drop of water, drop it in. See those little water balls bounce around? That’s what you want. If it just evaporates, you’re not hot enough. You need to get this hotter. If you have this kind of heat, your stainless steel pan will be non-stick. Add a high temperature fat. Of course, as usual, I’m using clarified butter. I pat my piece of meat dry. And now, in it goes. Medium to mediumigh heat. And let that go for about 5 minutes. I forgot a very important step. And you can already see the meat is kind of blowing up. The reason why it’s doing that is I forgot to make a small cut on this side. So, I’m going to fix that. There. There’s the skin around the pork chop which contracts when it gets hot and that causes the meat to bend. So, don’t forget to cut through that skin on the outside that the meat doesn’t form a dome. Now, it’s nice and flat. In the meantime, here is a second hot pan. Again, a little bit of fat into that in my vegetables go. Pinch of salt. Couple grinds of pepper. It’s starting to form a nice crust. Don’t overcook your pork. Pork, particularly a pork chop, tends to get pretty dry. You don’t want that. Time to flip. I’m cooking the pork to a core temperature of 135. You should be at 145, but I’m going to put this aside and make the pan sauce and reheat it afterwards in the sauce. So, that means I will have extra heat going into that once it goes into the sauce. My vegetables have a little bit of char. That’s good. We don’t want any more char than this, though. So, now it’s time to reduce the heat a little. I’m going to medium. And I’m going to add a little dash of white wine for some acidity. Of course, you could use a little bit of broth or just a dash of water if you don’t want to use wine. And now I’m going to cover this to let this finish cooking, which will take another two or three minutes. Time to pull out the pork. Now for the pan sauce, it’s a simple balsamic glaze. So in that pan, first I delaze it with a shot of white wine. This can splatter a lot. It just did, so I had to clean up a little. Now add a good dash of balsamic, a little bit of soy sauce, and a little bit of coconut aminos. You don’t have to use them, but they’re kind of sweet and good umami, so they work perfectly in a sauce like this. Last, but not least, we need a good amount of brown sugar. Now you just keep this on a medium to medium high and reduce it down by half. This should get kind of a syrupy consistency. Our vegetables are done. I turned them off and left just let them sit in the pan so they stay warm. Now when you’re almost there, put back your meat together with all the juices it accumulated and let that heat through again. Put on your steak. Add some veg. Add some of the mashed potatoes. And now drizzle over some glaze. And there’s dinner made in about 20 minutes and quite affordable, too. And if you’re interested in more affordable recipes, you should check out my affordable recipe playlist.
1 Comment
Awesome. Thank-you. Pork is about the inly affordable protein available today. Thanks again!