Friday, April 22, 2011

Stuffed Pork Chops - This One's a Keeper!

A few days ago, I took a bag of chicken breasts out of the freezer to thaw because I thought I would make a chicken breast recipe I had seen. When the breasts thawed, I learned that they weren't breasts at all, but were boneless pork chops (I guess they really are "the other white meat"!) Well, I didn't have a clue what to do with them since I hadn't planned on them, so I put them in the fridge thinking I'd make them the next night when I had time to decide how. The next night came and went with my daughter going out and not being here for supper. The night after that as well. By then I had found the perfect recipe, but needed to buy stove top (style, not brand) dressing since I didn't have any like I thought. Today was the finally the day that these pork chops were going to be made.


The recipe called for the chops to be pounded, which was unusual. That's usually done for scallopini or cutlets. I've never seen that for stuffed chops before. I got the wax paper out, laid the bottom sheet down, placed two chops on the paper and laid the top sheet over them. Since I still don't know where my mother's meat mallet is, I decided to use my heaviest sauce pan to pound them. I've got to say, it does pretty darned well! After pounding the two (pulling off the excess fat), I set them aside and pounded the third one. Then I made the stuffing. Love it. It takes all of five minutes. That's not to say I don't like homemade stuffing. I make it and I do pretty well, but I don't always want to have celery and onions on hand or a lot of extra bread to use to make it. Plus, that would make too much and it would be drier than the stove top kind. So, I got the stuffing made and put two small scoops on each chop. These weren't the biggest chops, so as I rolled, the stuffing made its escape out the ends. Ugh. But, I didn't let it stop me. I just took my toothpicks (in lieu of the twine the recipe called for that I didn't have) and skewered the chops together around the stuffing and then shoved the escapees back in the ends. The third chop was an odd shape, so it ended up looking like a 3-point Minuteman hat when I was done skewering it (but that actually kept more of the stuffing inside doing it that way). 


Stuffed and overflowing
One by one, I placed them in the baking dish (I didn't grease it). I put fresh ground salt and pepper over the chops and then filled all the empty areas around the chops with the remaining stuffing. I sprinkled poultry seasoning over top of everything and added a little chicken broth as well (to keep the stuffing from drying out.


Ready for the oven
I turned the oven on to 350° and put the baking dish in after covering it with foil (to also keep it from drying out or getting to crusty - it's a personal thing. I hate crunchy stuffing.) I took the foil off 45 minutes later and left the dish in the oven for about another 10 minutes. 
Cut in half and tender
I can only say that the one I ate was amazing! Seriously amazing. I often joke that I can tell when something is done when the smoke alarm goes off because cooking just isn't my forte (despite my love of all things kitchen or recipe related). I'm not a bad cook; I'm a lazy cook. I can think of hundreds of things I'd rather do than stand over a stove, and I usually do at least one of them. But, let me put it in the oven or in a crockpot and give me permission to do something else in the meantime and I do pretty well. Today was one of those days. The pork chop was tender and moist, the stuffing was perfect (I'm thinking of adding apple the next time for a touch of sweet), and the poultry seasoning really put it over the top in my book. 


One down, two to go
By the way, if you're ever near a Dollar General, buy their chicken stuffing mix. It was $.85 and it is fantastic! You can actually see and taste the bits of onion and celery in the mix when it's done. Best value for the price I've seen yet! They didn't slack off on taste at all.

7 comments:

  1. Oh yeah, sounds good. We love pork chops too.

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  2. I love stuffed pork chops, and they're so easy to make. :O)

    My “S” Post
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  3. Well that was a happy accident, defrosting pork chops instead of chicken. Sounds delicious.

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  4. :) I'm not a meat eater but I do love it when something comes together!

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  5. Always looking for new ways to use pork chops.

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  6. I'm not big on Pork Chops but am glad you enjoyed the ones you made! The dish looks appealing as far as the photos are concerned so they would be good decoration for my dinner table. :)

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