We have been looking for new ways to do pork chops and a breaded version seemed cool. The skillet potatoes have scallions, bacon, red pepper, and were awesome. More pics below and some info.

I did not get pics of it, but I cut bacon into diced and cooked them first. It makes for an evan cook and crisps up the bacon well. I took about 90% of the grease out with a paper towel and added some clarified butter and olive oil mix to coat the pan.

Diced some scallions and red bell pepper

Sauted the pepper for a minute and added the shallots. Mostly to get them soft, but they imparted a great flavor to the oil I will cook the potatoes in. Pulled the peppers and shallots and put in a ramekin.

A lot of flipping on medium heat browned the potatoes well.

Trimmed the fat from the chop and had a breading station. The final breading had parm cheese, crushed crackers, panko crumbs, and lots of seasoning.

Fried in clarified butter and olive oil. Finished in the toaster oven.

All of it was amazing. Those potatoes are right in our go to sides for sure. The breading was pretty awesome, but did not stick too well. I bet it was from the continued baking. Still great.

Tomato cream with chicken. So easy and so good.

Wings rule

That is deep fried meat lasagne, resting in a pool of alfredo sauce. Thanks Olive Garden

We are carnivores and pretty much have beef, chicken, or pork in most meals. Usually we will split a single serving though. So when we pick up some chicken breasts from the store I will sucky bag the ones we do not use right away. Chicken is so expensive in those smaller servings. We figured it was time to hit up sams and stock up. We got 14 good sized chicken breasts for $17 and some thick pork chops for a good price as well. Ended up finishing off a roll of the new sucky bags and we have had no problems with them at all.

Nothing like a nice slice of roasted chicken with some mashed taters and gravy. We roast chickens often and every now and then we do not use up all of the chicken. Lately the leavings just gets cut up and end up in the pet food. I have tried to recreate the flavor in a skillet with a boneless and skinless breast, but was not even close. Figured I would get some skin on breasts and try it out. Worked really good.

Vid: roast a full chicken.

Serious eats mentioned these Wilton brownie cup pans and we so knew we had to get them. The all edge brownie pans are pricey and we have the cheap one they sell on TV, and it sucks really bad. These pans were cheap and seemed like they would work well. Theresa makes some insanely awesome brownies and we tested the pans out last night. She used a disher to measure and some got 2 scoops and the others got 3. They came out amazing. it is like an all edge brownie. The rim of the cup was almost like a cookie and was firm.

below is the recipe and procedure.

Brownies

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 tablespoon water
10-12 oz chocolate chips
2 large eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts ( optional )

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease a cake pan.
In a sauce pan heat sugar, butter and water over medium heat until it just comes to a boil. Remove from heat and mix in chocolate chips until melted. Add eggs one at a time until blended. Add flour, baking soda and salt stir until mixed. Add vanilla extract. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake 18 to 20 min or until toothpick inserted 1 inch from edge comes out slightly dirty.

Shoot the cap gun as a warning to the brownies to taste good
*sniffs smoke*

If for some reason you do not buy the awesome brownie cup pans, yo can line your pan with parchment paper and lift it out of the pan with a friend to cool on the rack and make cutting them up really easy.

Phone pic was in low light and that part looks black, it was a dark red. Also this is after I had seasoned it and let it rest for 30 minutes. It is squished in the pic, it did not shrink that much. Still that pic looks awesome as hell.

I have started doing this and it is awesome. 1 day is enough, but the one above has 3 days in the air in the fridge. I use skewers jammed into a foam plate so it can age on both sides. Wrap the steak in a layer of paper towel and stick in the fridge. My first time looked like this.

Why would you do such a thing? Well basically you are just working some moisture out to concentrate flavor. Wikipedia can take it from here:

The process enhances beef by two means. First, moisture is evaporated from the muscle. This creates a greater concentration of beef flavor and taste. Second, the beef’s natural enzymes break down the connective tissue in the muscle, which leads to more tender beef.
Dry aging of beef is rare in super-markets in the United States today due to the significant loss of weight in the aging process. It is found in steakhouses and certain restaurants.

At home 1-3 days is the range you want to be in. Even though I had the ribeye wrapped in paper towels, 3 days took its toll. The edges were really dry. one bite seemed like there were pieces of jerky in there. The flavor was insane though. This was a select grade steak from Russ’s and it tasted and melted like butter. I cooked it in 4 minutes over my rocket hot side of the grill after coming to room temp and coated with fancy ass salts and cracked pepper.

1 day is enough, two is awesome, and 3 days you tackled the cow in the wild and then laughed at it for 72 hours before eating. The paper towel protects the meat and you are going to sear the outsides anyway, so be not fearful of the nasties. That steak was ageing in the cotton carpeted plastic coffin before you picked it up.

Trying to eat our way through our freezer. Figured some grilled pork chops would be good. We had some bread and always have lots of Nebraska sweet corn. Theresa wanted some potatoes too. Easy meal.

Are you boiling those chops? Click below to find out.

Actually I am brining the pork chops. They were still a bit frozen so brining helped thaw them too.

So why brine? Well pork these days are really lean. Brining will help lock the moisture in the pork. I am sure you would rather have a juicy chop over the dried and tough one.

This comes from Alton Brown on good eats.
pork chop episode part 1
pork chop episode part 2

The brine (for about 5 chops)
# 3/4 cup kosher salt (DO NOT use regular white table salt!)
# 1 cup brown sugar
# 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
# 1 tablespoon mustard powder (do not use prepared mustard!)
# 2 cups cider vinegar (heated until hot)
# 1 lb ice cubes

We are only having 2 chops so I chopped (tee he he) the brine in 1/2 and left stuff out. Was pretty much just salt and sugar.

Garlic Bread

Softened butter, garlic salt, granulated garlic, parsley, and parmesan cheese. I should of used fresh garlic, but I forgot because it has been a while. Cooked in toaster oven on 400 for a few minutes. I made the video below of it a while back. It is before we remodeled the kitchen and the old toaster oven.

Pan fried taters

Pretty simple. I slice them decently thick, put some oil and clarified butter in a non stick pan set to medium. When they get close to done I salt, pepper, and add greek seasoning.

Grillin

I get my grill rocket hot and those chops cook quick as heck. Some Misty’s seasoning works great for chops. Turn them 90 degrees to get the pretty marks, flip and a few minutes more and they are good to go.

Great meal with not too much work from stuff we just had around. No clue what to make tonight though.

Our little patch of 4 plants absolutely exploded. They are so crammed together and we got weeks worth of berries. To the point were we were throwing them out and gave up on picking them. We could of made preserves or something like that, but I figured if I blended them up and froze them into cubes I could enjoy home grown strawberries for months to come. They work and taste great. No need to add sugar at all. We are going to cut them back big time for next year. Might set up another patch too. They are so good right off the vine.

But BorK, you have already made a post about this. Dude, I know but this one has more pics in it and I like splain and stuff.

Take a chicken bewb or two and smash them down to an even thickness between some cling wrap. You can moisten the inside and outside of the cling wrap with water to make it less sticky. it really seems to help.

Use the flat side of your smashy thing and not the toothed side. You do not want a puddle of destroyed chicken goop. You want a slightly smooshed and even thickness bewb. It is still going to rip the meat a bit, but not too bad. It does not need to be really thin, just evenly thick. You could use a can of food to do this, but use one with a smoothish bottom cuz one with a ring will hurt it bad.

schmashed good

These are the spices I used to make a cajun seasoning. I know there is cajun seasoning as one of my spices, but I still for some reason feel the need to add some single spices in there to make me happy that I am in control of this situation. Be careful with the cayenne though.

Coat the smooshed bewb with your seasoning really well. This is what is going to flavor the whole dish and the cream and the cheese are going to fight the spice and try to make it all dull so spice up that bewb good.

Put a pan on medium heat and let it get hot. I like to use stainless pans because I am going to be wisking it and it sure does look pretty. If you want to test how hot the pan is fling some water from your fingers and wait for a sizzle. After it is hot pour a bit of olive oil or cooking oil in there. You prob do not want to waste good olive oil Like I am doing in the above pic, but I like to live on the wild side. Just enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan. We are not deep frying. The oil should heat up pretty quick so go grab that bewb.

We are not trying to blacken this, just cook it. Burnt spices really do not taste good so monitor your heat. I end up going a bit below medium. If it is smoking you are way too hot. Check for doneness on the first side and flip once. Might need to add a bit more oil and the oil is going to absorb some of the spice and change colors. The 2nd side should cook pretty quick.

Once done pull off and let rest. I like to put it on a piece of foil I have crinkled up so it can drain the juices. I seal it and let it carryover while I work on the rest of the meal. You will slice it later and maybe find out that it is not all the way cooked. That is fine because it will be going back into the sauce when it is cut up and it will finish up no prob.

Pull the pan off the heat so the goodness does not burn off and cut up some garlic and sun dried tomatoes.

If your pan is still hot keep it off the burner and add the garlic and SD tomatoes to the pan. Might need to add a touch more oil. Scrape them around on all the golden fond in the bottom of the pan and lightly cook for a minute or two. We are talking med low or lower if you put it back on the burner. Burnt garlic and burning all the seasoning leavings is going to ruin the whole meal. The SD tomato and garlic will prob get coated in all the fond in the pan and look gross, but do not worry.

Now we are going to add some white wine to add flavor and get all the goodness out of the crap in the pan. You pan should not be hot so you do not need to worry about this steaming all over. Add enough to cover the stuff and then let this simmer down and reduce on close to medium heat for a few minutes.

How about we cut up some tomatoes for a pretty garnish. Are the necessary? Nope, but they look good.

For some reason I forgot to get a pic of my cut up chicken. grrrr… Oh well, cut it up how you want. I go for bite size pieces. If there are juices in the foil or plate make sure to add that back into the sauce. it is magical dripping I tell ya.

Add some heavy whipping cream to your reduced sauce and stir it around.

this would be a good time to boil the pasta of your choice.

Throw that chicken in the pan now and simmer close to medium to reduce that sauce. Unfortunately this is the part you just need to learn by doing it. Getting the sauce to the right thickness is a bit tough. The warmer it is the runnier it is going to be. By the time it is on the pasta and plate it will thicken up. Oh and you still have to add the cheese which will thicken it up more. if it seems thick in the pan add some more cream, stir, and pull.

Shred some parmesan cheese very fine. I use a microplane which makes the smallest little slivers of instant melt cheese.

Get that cheese in there and make sure you have a bit left over as garnish. it just looks nice darnit. Stir it up and melt it. Now is the time to decide if it is thick enough. You could let it simmer some more, but not too hot because the cheese might mess up on ya. You could throw the pasta in there too, or just pour over pasta.

Garnish and enjoy.

I hope you were not looking for a recipe with measurements and the like. I do not roll that way. Cooking from a recipe is important in baking, but experimenting it by doing it and tasting along the way is going to help you so much more than any recipe will for cooking. Plus I do not know how many people you are going to be feeding or how hungry you are. Hope you enjoy it if you try to make it. maybe put a spin on it and use shrimp or something.