I picked up a couple pounds of pork chops awhile ago on sale at an insanely low price, and they are sitting in the freezer unused for the time being.
I was wondering if there was a good recipe out there for Crock Pot (err, slow cooker, whatever) pork chops. The reason that I want to make them in the crock pot is that there is just too much to deal with while frozen. I’d rather just throw them and some extra ingredients in a pot and leave it alone.
So, is there a good way to cook these things in a slow cooker? Or is that an improper, possibly blasphemous method of making them?
It probably is blasphemous to cook them that way, but I don’t care. I don’t have an actual recipe anymore, having gone veggie awhile back, but I used to throw pork chops into the crock pot with sliced onions and tart apples and whatever appropriate herbs and spices were at hand (that stuff in the jar labeled “poultry seasoning” works perfectly.) And my Mom used to crock-pot chops with sauerkraut, then make egg dumplings on the side - you could sub egg noodles easily, in fact, you can buy frozen egg noodles (I think the brand name is Reese?) and probably toss them in the pot close to the end of the cooking time.
That’s the only way I’ll fix pork chops.
Here is my favorite pork chop recipe:
Pork Chops & Gravy
1 can of condensed beef broth.
4-8 pork chops
1/2 cup flour
black pepper (1/8 -1/2 tsp.)
pinch of dry mustard.
Mix dry ingredients. Lightly coat chops with flour mixture. Save remaining mixture. Place chops in cooker and cover with most of the broth. Leave about 1/2 cup of broth in the can and mix with 1/4 cup of flour mixture until non-lumpy. Pour into cooker. Set temp. to LOW and cook 8 - 10 hours. Every couple of hours, sprinkle a little more of the flour mixture into cooker and stir. As the gravy thickens, you may need to stir it more often.
You’re not proposing throwing them into the slow cooker as a single, unthawed block are you? That’s probably not a good idea, if only because coating them in flour and searing them in a pan will help to keep them moist (pork cooked long and slow has a tendency to turn crumbly and dry, even if kept immersed in liquid).
Well, there is Joan Crawford’s advice from 'The Women": “You throw 2 porckchops in the oven, what’s to keep them from getting done?” To which I always add, “Forgetting to turn the oven on.”
We’ve been getting these incredible ‘Country Style’ Ribs at the store lately which are thick rib things with nice chunks of tenderloin attached which I’ve been crock potting. I throw in a bottle of BBQ sauce mixed with some liquid smoke, molasses, sesame oil and balsamic vinegar and let fly for the day. I have to strain out the bones before serving. But as suggested earlier, I brown them first to keep them moist.
No its not improper to cook them. Heres a quick and dirty way to cook it all at once:
Get a large iron pot (or any other large casserole), fill the pot with roughly chopped carrot, onions and whole small potatoes, and put the chops on top.
Add a few bay leafs, a big handful of fresh parsley and thyme, a handfull of whole garlic cloves, a big pinch of crushed pepper, a small handful of salt (you can replace the salt with some beef cubes). Chuck in a lump of butter.
Add a bottle of dark beer or two, then add water until all ingedients are covered.
They stay moist (and incredibly tender) when I use my recipe, and I don’t brown them first. However, I do thaw them. Browning makes them look better, but if you completely trim the fat before cooking, the browning process leaves them tough and rubbery. OTOH, if you want to leave the fat on, you might as well just fry them anyway, because there’s no need for fat in a crockpot, that’s the reason you add liquid.
I’ve been trying to make some pulled pork for a while, and saw a recipe similar to yours in the recent crockpot thread. Lately, the country style ribs have been on sale for about a buck a pound, so I thought I’d try them. I put down a bunch of sliced onions, the county style ribs and a bunch of barbeque sauce and enough water to cover. It actually came out pretty killer, even though I got carried away with the onions.
The “ribs” look suspiciously like pork shoulder to me.
They are not pork shoulder, but you’re not far off. Country-style ribs are cut from the blade end of the loin (close to the shoulder).
Personally, I don’t like slow cooking lean cuts of meat like pork chops. For crock pot recipes, I always use a cut like Boston butt (shoulder), country style ribs, or the like. The texture of pork chops is funny (to me) when cooked with a slow, moist method.
Those are my absolute favorite things to grill. You can’t go wrong. Plenty of fat so they won’t dry out. Next time you get a sale, fill the freezer with them. Cook a while, cover with BBQ sauce, repeat.
