Pork Chops with Guinness Beer

29. May 2008 Pork 0

The pork chops from DeBragga.com glistened in the morning light coming through the kitchen. I couldn’t get over how beautiful the marbling was. Pork chops are easy to find but they’re never beautifully cut like these, almost like lamb.

I’ve cooked a lot of tried and true pork chop recipes for this Web site but I wanted to try something new for this batch. I used Mark Bittman’s ribs recipe using stout beer. That looked so good and I wanted to try it for pork. A little bit of browning and braising were all it took for the meat to fall apart from the bones. I even had to skip the roasting part and just served them straight from the Dutch oven. Golden brown on the outside but soft inside, they were the perfect pick me ups for a lazy weekend lunch.

Ingredients:
4 pork chops, seasoned with salt and pepper
1 bottle or can of Guinness, or any stout beer
3 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp of allspice
2 red chiles, crushed
1 small knob of ginger, peeled, minced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
oil, salt, pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350º. In the meantime, brown pork chops in a large Dutch oven with hot oil over medium heat, about 8 minutes per side. Remove chops and set aside. Discard oil except for 2 tbsps.
2. Return the pot over medium heat. Sauté garlic and ginger. Toast cinnamon sticks, chiles and allspice. Add the chops back in and pour in beer. Using a wooden spoon, scrape off the bits and pieces from the bottom of the pan.
3. When oven is ready, cover the pot and braise in the oven for 1 hour, turning the chops after 45 minutes. Serve chops on a plate with some of the beer sauce.