Cooking With Heavy Metal

Here's a great meal I just whipped up after work on Friday 3-9-12. This is the song that was playing while we ate, so if you would, you could push play and then read the rest of this blog, or don't. It'd be a lot cooler if you did though. A band I just recently discovered, which is pretty spacy, alternative rock. The album is quite good. Codeseven - Dancing Echos/Dead Sounds.



So I took out some boneless pork chops from Costco this morning, you know the big meaty ones that melt in your mouth, before I left for work. Got home around 4:00 and whipped up my new favorite way to treat these bad boys and that is to Brine them:

As you can see it is a liquid mixture used as a type of marinade and prepared by the following simple recipe:

5 boneless pork chops (I used 3 instead)
3/4 cup Kosher Salt
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 tbsn whole peppercorns
1 tbsn ground mustard (I used whole grain mustard since I was out of the ground variety)
2 cups apple cider vinegar
handful of ice cubes

I also cut the brine in half since I was feeding a family of 2 and a half. So basically you heat the vinegar up until its hot and dump into a bowl filled with the rest of the sweet, saltyness, and let it dissolve for 15 minutes or so, you then dump the ice cubes in and melt them to cool the mixture down and then drown the chops in the "brine", cover and chill in the fridge for up to two hours, preferably exactly 2 hours.

We decided that since it was so nice outside we would head down the street across I-80 to the Truckee River and let our daughter Presley throw rocks in the Truckee River at Mayberry park. It was a beautiful evening not a lot of people out and Presley always has fun doing anything outdoors and is fascinated by the littlest of things.

We got home about 5:30 and it was time to prepare the rest of the feast. I started by firing up the grill and preparing some roasted red potatoes with red bell pepper, garlic and some seasoning (salt pepper, parsley, rosemay olive oil) and throwing them in the oven cause they take like an hour. Meanwhile I took the chops out of the fridge to get to room temperature and the next step is to rinse them off and pat them dry and coat them with your favorite rub/BBQ seasoning. I used my top secret rub I have in the cupboard I use on all my pork products as shown below:

Meanwhile again I prepared the other side dish consisting of asparagus. I coated it with olive oil, salt and pepper, and the leftover garlic from the potato dish I popped in the oven. I love asparagus cause it makes my pee smell so great. jk. But on the grill is hands down the best way to cook asparagus. Especially when you add the smoke chips as shown above in the first photo.

The next and final step was to go ahead and flop the shit on the grill, preferably using a "mangrate" which I purchased at http://mangrate.com/ and heard about from Adam Carolla on his radio show years ago, or maybe it was when he first started up his podcast. Its a solid chunk of cast iron that sits directly on your existing grill and is similar to cooking on a cast iron skillet except its on the grill. I try and time it out to get 4 flip 2 sessions on each side of the meat to get a piece of meat that looks like this (~ 4 minutes per side more or less depending on how thick they are):

Oh ya, between flips I baste the chops with Apple Butter, which is sort of like a jelly but thinner and more like a thick BBQ sauce. I bought a jar at the store and use it religiously when I cook, especially pork products.

The cool thing about this brine recipe is the brining process actually sort of pre-cooks the meat so you don't have to cook the shit out of it to avoid contracting Trichinosis or some crazy pig virus. So basically you cook it to a medium rare like a beef steak and it remains moist and tender. The asparagus is grilled until its soft and smokey and delicous. The potatoes are usually done about this time and you are most definitely ready to dig in. The only thing lacking this evening was a cold one, which I just decided to lay off. I don't drink like I used to and most of the time it only makes me feel sick and not the buzz I used to seek as a younger dude. So here is what the final product looked like before it was wolfed down:

It was quite tasty, and to be honest wasn't the best I've had, it was a little on the salty side, I think I put a little too much salt and not enough ice to dilute the brine with, but it was definitely succulent and the asparagus was to die for, the potatoes perfectly crispy and delicious. Another week down and the weekend coming up. Start to finish took about 3 hours and we had a nice walk on the River in between. Can't beat that. So I started with a song might as well end with one that is playing on my computer as I write this from an album I just picked up by a band I've been a fan of for a long time, but fell out when they parted ways with the original singer and brought on a new line-up. The latest album was surprisingly awesome, not quite the same as the old line-up but definitely good music if you like rock and roll southern tinged blues:




Try out the BRINE sometime and let me know what you think. For the actual recipe that I got my proportions from go to: http://www.food.com/recipe/alton-browns-2-hour-mustard-brine-for-pork-chops-or-roast-191816 I get a lot of ideas off the food network and most then time do my own little twist on them and/or use the basics for proportion related concerns on ingredients. Hope you liked the post.