While granting that it hasn’t been necessary for decades, there are ways to thoroughly cook pork that don’t turn it into leather. If you’ve had it such that it was cooked to leather, the bigger problem isn’t blind adherence to the USDA guidelines or irrational fear of parasites; the bigger problem is that someone just doesn’t know how to cook.
I have no problem cooking a pork roast or tenderloin to that perfect pink and juicy doneness. I use the thermometer, pull them early and let them rest. But pork chops cook so goddamn fast! By the time they are seared on both sides, the middle is white and the meat is tough. Maybe I need thicker pork chops.
While I agree there are lots of people that used the previous FDA guidelines to tell us that know how to cook pork that we were in danger, we were going to die, and insisted that pork be cooked to within an inch of its life.
Make a brine and soak your chops ahead of time. ! cup of kosher salt to 1 gallon of water (scale for the amount of brine you need, for a couple of chops 1/4 cup to 1 quart of water) Soak them for a couple of hours before cooking
I add sugar (honey / molasses / brown sugar) to the brine - generally, 1/2 the amount of salt. For small pork chops, I would brine for 1/2 hour to 45 minutes only. The larger the cut of meat, the longer the brine.
Pork benefits from a two stage cooking. Heat the pan until the surface of Venus would consider it hot, then add the chops and sear about 90 seconds per side. Remove from pan. Finish in 250 - 275 oven until done (or, as I often do, make a sauce in the pan, then put the seared chops back in the pan until they finish).
^
serve with pickles, lots of hot sauce and iced beer!
That is the beauty of a brine, you can play with it to find the taste profile you like. I often use apple juice in a pork brine, and OJ in a brine for chicken.
Experiment. Have fun.
You’re fortunate that you’ve gotten your mother’s voice out of your head. Mine has been dead for over 10 years and I can STILL hear her tell me that you have to cook pork until it no longer resembles anything palatable.
No, I mean, it was possible to meet the FDA guidelines and still have tasty pork. Unless you’re saying that some of the folks who couldn’t do that just used those guidelines as an excuse, which is probably true.
I’d imagine that a boar being eaten is an animal of quite certain providence = not enough to still be alive. :eek:
Provenance, on the other hand… 
With pork chops or pork loin, brining it would be the way to do that. With shoulder and tougher/fattier/more connective tissue cuts, well you can braise/slowcook/barbecue those to way the hell beyond well-done temps (195+, which is intentionally done and a correct way to prepare this meat.)
That said, when it comes to chops or pork loin, I prefer pink juicy pork to brined well-done pork (which is also juicy in its own way, but still different in texture.) I simply don’t like tenderloin or chops that are cooked well, no matter the preparation. I especially don’t understand why people like the slow cooked chops that are cooked in a liquid for an extended period of time. But people seem to like it, so shrug.
this was the temp we used to cook pork to at the place I worked in like 20 years ago…how is this new?
USDA guidelines have been very very conservative. Officially, it’s been 165F for awhile. I believe ground beef is still recommended to be cooked to around 160F, although people all around the US have been ordering burgers at much lower levels of doneness for ages.
I know at least one restaurant that claimed they couldn’t cook it bellow 165. I’ve often suspected they could, but used low quality beef.
Not that it tastes bad, mind you. I like brown burgers, not pink.
Pink pork? Baruch HaShem!
I’ve been to a few places that refused to cook below medium or medium well (I forget which). I have no problem with 1/4 pounders and thinner cooked well done, but once you get to 1/3 lb or 1/2 lb pub burger size, it has to be medium rare (err on the side of too rare) for me. Then again, I love beefsteak tartare.
Depends on what you mean by “could”. They were certainly physically capable of it, but they probably had policies against it to avoid legal trouble from the inspectors, or liability if a customer ate there and got sick. If someone sues you over something like that, it’s a lot easier to say “look here, we were complying with the official USDA recommendations” than to argue that the official USDA regulations are stricter than they need to be and that you’re perfectly safe despite violating them.
Yeah, that one I thought I’d typed provenance. I read provenance. Obviously not
Goodbye dried out pork,
though I never knew you at all
you had the grace to taste real good
while the worms inside you crawled…
This is absolutely true. I’ve been enjoing pork of the non-hockey puck variety for a few years now after having found out that there are more cases per year of the Plague in the U.S.
In celebration of the new guidelines, I smoked a bone-in pork loin last night. Instead of getting it to my usual 150 (after resting), I served at 145.