Milk-Brased Spiced Pork Chops

A few posts ago, I spoke about a blog I had been introduced to called The Recipe Development Engineer. The author of the blog, Ludwig, wrote a great piece about braising meat. Long story short, braising makes pretty much any piece of meat moist and delicious (read the full article here). Last night, I came up with a braising recipe of my own. There's an Italian way of preparing a pork roast wherein it is slowly braised in milk; I played with it a bit in order to give it some zing.

Please, don't try eating the bay leaf.

Ingredients:

   - 1-2 lb worth of pork chops

   - 2 tbsp butter or oil

   - 2 cups milk

   - 1 tsp salt

   - 1 tsp black peppercorns (or ground black pepper)

   - 1 tbsp rosemary

   - 2 tsp marjoram

   - 2 bay leaves

Instructions:

1. Melt the butter or heat the oil in a large pot. If you have cast iron, it will serve you well here.
2. Brown the pork chops, one at a time if necessary, about three to five minutes per side. The thicker they are, the more comfortable you can be giving them a nice and thorough browning.
3. Remove the pan from heat, and place all four pork chops in. Try to spread them out as much as possible, minimizing height.
4. Add the salt, pepper, rosemary, and marjoram.
5. Pour the milk over the spices, allowing the turbulence of pouring to mix things around. Add the bay leaves. At this point the milk should be covering the meat; if it isn't, add more milk.
6. Return to heat, and bring to a gentle simmer.
7. Cover, and simmer for one hour or more.

I served this over a bed of steamed carrots, radishes, and red bliss potatoes (a good choice, as would be any root vegetables). Wow. I was pretty surprised with just how good the pork chops were. The best word to describe them is "succulent." They were tender enough to cut with a fork. I cooked four relatively thin pieces of meat, taking two out after an hour and letting the others braise for an additional hour as my girlfriend and I ate dinner and did the dishes. She had one of them for lunch today and said she was floored by how it just melted in her mouth. Ideally, I'd like to do this with big, thick chops; thicker meat would allow me to get a better brown along the outside without having to worry about the effects on the interior of the meat. Flavor-wise, the milk and spices add a wonderful richness to the meat that really has to be tasted to be fully understood.

One nice thing about this preparation method is that it's extremely forgiving. If you're feeling lazy, you can probably skip the browning of the meat. Furthermore, it doesn't really matter how long you simmer for. The dish is fully cooked after probably a half hour so; additional time just allows for the meat to get softer. You could even try adding a ton of different spices to the milk, and it would probably come out delicious no matter what.

Final Verdict:

Taste: 4.5/5

Ease: 4/5

Health: 3.5/5