What’s for Dinner?: Apple Stuffed Pork Chops

Don’t worry, I’m not becoming a food blog.  For so many reasons, but most importantly because I’m not a good cook and my pictures aren’t anywhere near good enough to be a food blog.  Besides, you’d miss all the fun stories about my kids…wouldn’t you?  But I did make a promise to myself that I was going to try some new recipes this year, and posting the recipes here makes sure that I stick to that promise.  And just maybe I can help someone else spruce up their own meal plan.  So here we go…

Pork and I have a difficult relationship.  I like it.  I don’t love it, but I like it.  And it can be a nice change from the normal beef/chicken theme we have going in our house.  But pork is tough.  It’s so easy to over cook, and once it’s dried out, it isn’t even worth eating.  My mom used to totally massacre pork in the oven when I was a kid.  It was barely edible.  Since then, I’ve had good pork chops and know how delicious they can be.  So when I saw this recipe for Apple Stuffed Pork Chops, I knew I had to try it.  I wasn’t sure how it would come out, but I had to try it.

You will need:

1 tablespoon chopped onion

6 tablespoons butter

1 cup plain bread crumbs

2 cups chopped apples

1/4 cup chopped celery

2 teaspoons chopped, fresh parsley

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 1-inch thick pork chops

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Pepper to taste

Step 1 – Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Step 2 – Place butter in skillet over medium high heat.  Once butter is melted, add onion and saute until tender.  This only took a couple minutes, so make sure you don’t leave it on too long (if you see the melted butter turning brown, it’s too long).  Remove from heat.

Step 3 – Add bread crumbs, apples, celery, parsley and salt to the onion and butter in the skillet.  Mixed until combined.  Place to the side.

Step 4 – Rinse meat under cool water and cut a small slit in the side of the chop, creating a pocket.

Step 5 – In a medium sized skillet, heat oil on medium high heat.  Once hot, place pork chop in the skillet, browning on both sides.  When chop is brown on each side, remove from the skillet.

Step 6 – Salt and pepper the pork chop, including inside the pocket you created on the side.  Once you’ve salt and peppered to your liking, spoon the apple and bread crumb stuffing from Step 3 into the pocket and stuff until full.  Put stuffed pork chops into an ungreased 13×9 pan, placing any left over stuffing around the pork chops.  Cover pan with foil.

Step 7 – Bake for 20 minutes.  Then remove the foil and bake for an additional 25 minutes, or until the juices are run clear.

Step 8 – Accessorize with your favorite side dishes and serve immediately!

If you’re going to try this recipe, I would try it first on a weekend night – it would make a nice Sunday dinner.  The reason being, the prep time on this is probably 25 minutes and when you add that to the cook time of 45 minutes, it’s just more time than I have on a week night.  My kids come home and need to eat right then and there; the most I can hold them off is 30-40 minutes.  After that they’re just tired and cranky and dinner goes downhill.  I say try it on a weekend night first, because maybe after you’ve done it once or twice you can cut down the prep time to 15 minutes, making this a do-able week night menu option for your house hold.  I always find the very first time I make a recipe is the slowest and then, once I have the hang of it, it takes considerably less time to make.

With respect to cooking, I will decrease the cooking time to 20 minutes uncovered the next time around (so it’s 20 minutes with the foil on, 20 minutes with the foil off).  My chops were still tender, but a bit overdone in places.  I’ll also skip the parsley next time…I’m not a huge fan of it anyway, so that’s not shocking.  All in all, we loved these pork chops and will be adding them to our meal plan rotation!

What new recipes have you tried lately?