My mother would make pork chops quite often when I was a kid. Most likely because they were cheap, not just because they were delicious. She was nothing, if not thrifty. But every once in a while she'd bring home a couple Hormel "smoked" pork chops if they were on a good sale. They only came 2 or 3 in a package, and they definitely were not cheap. And I loved the things.
Even though I'm sure the smoke flavor was artificial, they had a great "hammy" taste that I now know was due to brining. Every few years I get in the mood to try to recreate them, with varying degrees of success. In the past I've tried dry methods with QT and Morton's Brown Sugar Cure, but they turned out a little overpowering.
Safeway had a sale on chops this week @ $1.79 lb. so I thought I'd give it another go. These are about 1/2" thick, like the Hormel ones.
I think this is the first time I'm using our dear friend Pop's brine recipe with these, and we'll see how it goes. I put a 2-1/2 gallon ziplock bag into a 2 gallon bucket and filled it with about 3 lbs of chops and 1 gallon of Pop's brine. I also added some liquid smoke for the first time, that was leftover from a sausage kit. The directions on the liquid smoke bottle said to add 5 t. per gallon of brine, but that sounded like a lot to me, so I used 3 t. Let it soak for 2 days and rinsed and bagged for tonight. It's raining pretty good here right now, but I may still throw these on the Weber Performer for a quick grill.
More to come...
