Jersey Girl's Italian Pork Gravy - A Great and Easy Recipe

I tried a new recipe today. I can't remember what I was doing when I found it, but I know that the blog's title drew me in. A Jersey Girl Cooks. That got my attention because, you see, I'm a Jersey Girl,too. I have fine-tuned it a bit geographically. My other blog is called A South Jersey Girl Writes. That's where I post my writing efforts that aren't food related. So, I just had to take a look at what she had to offer. That's when I found Mama's Sunday Pork Gravy. 


It looked fantastic and oh so easy (something very important to me, of course, being the lazy cook that I am). I have never been able to make a decent pasta sauce from scratch. I could "doctor" the jarred stuff, but without it, my efforts were lacking significantly. Initially, I thought I'd use a couple of my chicken leg quarters, but then I remembered some pork chops I had in the freezer. I thawed them and this afternoon, I began to make this recipe. I'm so glad I did.

Lisa's end result

The recipe calls for one can of crushed tomatoes and one can of tomato puree. I didn't have it, but I did have two cans of crushed tomatoes, so I used both of them. Instead of six cloves of garlic, I used three teaspoons of garlic juice. I didn't have onion powder, so I used dried minced onions instead. So, I was as true to the recipe as I could be and it turned out really well.

My end result, not as dark and rich

The pork chops provided additional flavor and depth to the sauce (or gravy, as Lisa calls it in her blog. I like her explanation - gravy contains meat or is meat based while sauces do not). I may have used a bit too much red wine in de-glazing the pan, but the sauce (er, gravy) still turned out wonderful. The meat was tender and fell off the bone. The cats, of course, were thrilled to have the bone when I was done. I can definitely say that this is a recipe I will be using again!