Thursday, October 1, 2009

Crunchy Baked Pork Chops

I love me some Shake N'Bake, so obviously, when America's Test Kitchen did a thing with some Crunchy Baked Pork Chops, it caught my eye. I love me a good pork chop.

The recipe calls for a quick brine....


And then you use fresh bread in the food processor to make some breadcrumbs. And as long as I'm grinding the bread in there, why not the shallot and garlic, too??


Then, you bake them to toast them up a little bit. And this is where I had problems... the first batch of crumbs I did as directed for the time indicated, and the outter edges of the pan burned and the middle was still a soggy mess. So, I quickly whirlled up a new batch of crumbs, garlic and shallot, and kept a better eye on them. They still didn't turn out as evenly brown as I wanted, but at least they weren't burned.


Time to flour....


Then coat in the eggy/mustardy/flour mixture...

Then the crumbs.... (neat little lesson I learned there... if you roast them on foil and let them cool on the foil, you can be a total lazy slob and also use that as the container for coating the chops, and cut down on the dishes you need to clean....)


Happy pork chops, into the oven....


And happy pork chops, out of the oven.....


Overall, it really wasn't too much work (other than having to do the crumbs twice) and the result was indeed some good, crispy pork chops. Mine might have been a bit thick (the hubby sees the slightest bit of pink in pork and he'll whine that I'm trying to poison him) but they did turn out pretty good. Better than Shake N Bake, and almost as easy.

3 comments:

Rosie Hawthorne said...

Rosie raises hand.
Small voice:
"I like Shake n Bake on pork chops."

I'll have to try this.

Scarehaircare said...

That is looking like a Sunday dinner to me. I shall put it into the lineup. Thanks for posting!

Unknown said...

Rosie - a favorite quote from "The Simpsons" around here...

Homer: Marge, your cooking has two moves. Shake and Bake.

Marge: You like Shake n Bake! You used to put it in your coffee!


I also like Shake n Bake... this recipe actually does a decent job of getting as much flavor into the chop as tyhe SnB.