I have encountered a number of people who believe that you must accompany a meal of pork chops with apple sauce. Often if you ask why they’ll reply that either “you’ll get sick if you skip the apple sauce” or that they don’t know they’ve just always done it that way.
First, is this a widespread belief?
Second, was there ever, or is there now, any justification for this?
I’ve always assumed it had to do with a fear of trichinosis, but that’s just a guess.
Sometimes I have the applesauce and sometimes I don’t. It’s OK but I don’t love it either. Never got sick!
Agreed. It’s seriously inferior to mint sauce, which is made in about two minutes by heating balsamic vinegar, mint and a small amount of brown sugar in a saucepan.
Not into mint jelly, myself; though Shayna makes an awesome mint pesto sauce. I make gravy from the drippings, but usually just eat the meat with nothing else on it but the rub.
Sweet and savoury go together, and this is especially true of pork. Apple sauce is sweet, but not too sweet. A former roommate made a nice onions-and-apples dish that went very well with grilled country pork ribs. (I wish that one was in his cookbook. It’s not the same when I make it.)
It does taste good. The last couple times I made pork chops, I had forgotten the apple sauce, so instead I just threw some apple slices into the pan when the chops were nearly done. It worked out quite well.
I think the tradition must go back to the idea that you were supposed to stick an apple in the mouth of a whole pig before roasting it.
And I agree about the mustard. You’d put it on a banger, so why not any other kind of pork?
Same here. Ketchup? Really? Mustard or some kind of pan gravy is what we’ve always done with pork chops. I never grew up with the tradition of apples. One of my English friends said the tradition came from pigs raised on/near apple orchards, and letting them roam and eat fallen apples, hence the pairing of apples and pork became reasonable, but I don’t know if there’s any fact to it or not. I’d guess there is some truth to this.
Personally, I think that cruciferous vegetables are excellent side dishes for pork. I might eat a bit of applesauce after the pork, but I want some broccoli and maybe some rice with the pork itself.
I’ve heard of serving applesauce with pork, but I’ve never heard that there’s supposed to be a health reason for it.
The whole applesauce thing dates from when our parents & before used to cook pork to utter over-well-doneness. You needed something with a lot of wetness to make the resulting leather edible.
And yes, apple flavor & pork flavor go together. Nowadays a medium done and juicy porkchop with a bit of apple or apple & onion on the side is tasty.
But there’s certainly no health issue with eating pork without the apples as an antidote to whatever evil they think lurks in a chop.
Goodness, I can imagine it took 16 posts to mention TBB.
Actually, IIRC it was the middle son (momentary brainfart) doing his Jimmy Cagney imitation, saying “Pork Chops and apple sauce.” So you can’t just say it, you have to say it imitating the Brady kid imitating Jimmy Cagney.