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Prevent Your Pork Chops From Becoming Shoe Leather: Brine Them

Buttermilk-Brined Pork Chops With Whiskey-Braised Cabbage And Apples

After repeatedly dry results, Food Guy Jon Jackson will no longer buy center-cut pork chops. "You can run into a certain dryness and the thing begins to look like shoe leather turning up at the edges. How can you keep pork moist?"Other Food Guy Greg Patent has an answer: brine pork chops before you cook them. Brining can moisten not only turkey and chicken breasts, but red meat, too. In recent decades, Greg explains, breeders have reduced the amount of fat in a typical cut of pork, leading to more problems with dryness. (Heritage pork suffers less from this problem.)

Brining is surprisingly quick: soak one-inch-thick butterflied pork chops in a quart of water mixed with a quarter cup of table salt for 30 to 45 minutes. This volume of salt water accommodates up to 6 chops. Rinse off the salt, pat the chops dry, and proceed to grill or pan sauté them as usual.

The pork schnitzel version:  Pound the brined one-inch chops down to a quarter-inch thickness, dust them with flour, dip them in egg, then breadcrumbs, and sauté them quickly over medium-high heat in butter and olive oil. No additional herbs or spices are needed, though you might squeeze lemon juice over the chops when they're done.

 

(Broadcast: "The Food Guys," 11/1/15 and 11/5/15. Listen weekly on the radio at 11:50 a.m. Sundays and again at 4:54 p.m. Thursdays, or via podcast.)

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