The purpose of brining is to break down the fibers in the meat ergo making it more tender. Brining basically is marinating meat in a salt based liquid that has optional ingredients you can add to enhance the flavor of the meat. Lesson Learned 2 – Try brining your chops: If you’ve never tried brining you really should. Once the oven has reached 400 degrees you take the skillet out of the oven (make sure you use mitts because the pan will be hot) put it on the stove over medium high heat and then sear the chops one one side before turning the chops over and putting the skillet back in the oven. Handy Trick: One other trick I learned was to put the skillet in the oven and leave it there while the oven is preheating. So if you want to do more than two chops in one skillet get a skillet larger than 10 inches. Chops of that size take up quite a bit of room in the skillet. You need to use center cut bone-in chops for this recipe. Just make sure you know how many chops will fit in your skillet without crowding them. Nothing else in the recipe has to be adjusted significantly. If you get a larger skillet you can easily do four chops. I have a 10 inch skillet and that is big enough for two pork chops the size required for this recipe so I’m writing this recipe for two. Just look at it as building up your upper body strength while preparing an absolutely delicious meal! But in my mind that does not outweigh the benefits. Now that’s a bargain! The main downside to a cast iron skillet is that it’s heavy to lift. Depending on what size skillet you get you’ll pay somewhere between $15 – $30. And if that isn’t enough it is also one of the cheapest skillets you can buy. Plus it moves seamlessly from stove top to oven. It may take a little longer to heat up (and really not all that much longer) but once it does it provides even heat that will not dissipate quickly. Lesson Learned 1 – Take my advice and buy a cast iron skillet: Recently I’ve been doing a lot of cooking in my cast iron skillet and I’ve learned to love it! Cast iron is your best method for cooking. So let’s talk juicy oven baked pork chops… But there are a couple of little secrets you need to be aware of and I’ll share them in my lessons learned. I want to share this recipe because it is so easy and I guarantee perfect results every time. And preparing it this way was not all that difficult. Let me tell you this pork chop was melt in your mouth delicious. I tested these chops in their thickest part with a meat thermometer and it read 140 degrees which is ideal. Most people, including myself, used to think that pork was not cooked thoroughly when it had a little pink in it. Pork that is done correctly will have a little bit of pink marbling in the meat as you can see in the picture. When pork is done perfectly it should look like the picture below… Once it gets to that point it is overdone and will most likely be dry and tasteless. Most people think the meat has to be opaque white which is a fallacy. It’s only been within the last couple of years that I’ve learned how to cook pork. Needless to say, I was not a big fan of pork at the time – too dry and tasteless. (sorry Mom…) That’s the way I grew up thinking how pork should be cooked. When I was a child my mother would make a roast pork dinner and she always wanted to make sure it was cooked thoroughly so of course her roasts were always dried out. For a very long time I had not idea how to cook pork chops.
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