Pork: Now, Medium-Rare

While listening to the radio the other day, I heard a commercial from the pork industry. I don't think I've heard much advertisement from them since I was a little kid, back when "The Other White Meat" commercials were still often playing.

This new commercial really surprised me, though. It was informing me that the FDA had changed its guidelines for safely cooking pork. It used to be that pork was supposed to be heated to 160 °F. This new commercial claimed that whole pieces of pork could be served "juicy and medium-rare", after being cooked to 145 °F with a three minute rest period before eating. So what gives?

Image: savit keawtavee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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.

Cinnamon Pear Pork Loin

From what I understand, the city of Houston doesn't really have much in terms of seasons. There's summer, and then there's... not-summer. I've lived in the northeast all my life, and my favorite season has always been fall. I love the turning of the leaves, I love the crisp temperature, and I love good fall food. Even though Houston may be missing out on some of the external signs of fall, I've decided that at the very least I should bring fall into my apartment. I started out with this simple pork recipe. I have a few more good ones coming over the next few days; I just haven't typed them up yet.

Herb Rubbed Seared Pork Chops

At long last, my lovely girlfriend has joined me in our apartment. This means that I won't generally be cooking for one anymore. On top of that, her tastes are a bit different from mine. To celebrate the first dinner that we would have together, I wanted to make a dish that I thought she would love. Her favorite meat is pork, and she absolutely loves herbs. I came up with a nice herbal dry rub to put onto some pork chops, and it ended up being awfully good.

It's tastier than it looks.