Brined Thick Cut Panko Crusted Oven Fried Crispy Pork Chops
Brining is easy and makes a world of difference in the taste, tenderness and moisture of a baked pork loin chop.
Brining is the process of soaking meat in a saltwater solution to enhance moisture, tenderness, and flavor. The salt alters the meat's protein structure, allowing it to retain more water during cooking, which prevents dryness.
This technique has ancient roots. Early civilizations used salt for food preservation, including wet brining (submerging in salty liquid) and dry brining (rubbing with salt). The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all employed salting methods to preserve meats, and brining was especially crucial before refrigeration.
The modern use of brining, particularly for enhancing texture and juiciness rather than just preservation, gained popularity after a 1999 episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats on the Food Network when he introduced a wet-brined turkey recipe that became widely popular, especially for Thanksgiving. Brown’s scientific approach helped home cooks understand the benefits of brining, leading to a surge in its use. Trendy restaurants, like The French Laundry and the Zuni Café in San Francisco soon put brined chicken on their menus. Poultry producers, like Butterball and Honeysuckle started selling fresh brined turkeys en masse around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. A practice of necessity for millennia suddenly became de rigueur in modern kitchens, embraced by chefs and home cooks alike as the trendy way to enhance flavor and texture.
But brining also works exceptionally well with pork, which perhaps needs as much or more help than poultry. Pork chops are easily overcooked and this recipe takes a brined chop and cooks it quickly at a very high temperature with a Panko crust that gives you a crispy crust and juicy, flavorful meat. But you need two important pieces of kitchen hardware.
Don’t Take Chances Overcooking the Chops
You will see this paragraph repeated throughout Kitchen Tapestry, but it bears repeating for this recipe. The difference between a perfectly cooked pork chop and an overdone disappointment, even with brined meat and particularly when cooking at this very high heat, is a matter of mere minutes. While I give approximate cooking times, the only way to get it right is to use a meat thermometer. The best kind of meat thermometer to use is the digital kind that has an ovenproof probe which reads the internal temperature of the meat in real-time.
A Baking Rack Ensures Even Heat Circulation
In order to get the crispy goodness on the outside of your pork chops that this recipe promises, you must have a rack insert for a sheet pan or baking sheet. This recipe calls for a very high heat that must be able to circulate around each chop and a baking rack is the only way to properly do that. Carrying that thought a bit further, don’t crowd the pork chops on the top of the rack, instead leaving an inch or so between them to also ensure even circulation.
Here are some basic principles of brining, whether it’s a pork chop or poultry.
For this recipe, a two-hour brine is sufficient. Never brine pork for longer than four hours or the meat will develop a mushy texture. Chicken, if cut into individual pieces like, breasts, thighs and drumsticks will also take two hours. Whole chickens and turkeys are a different matter, requiring 12 to 24 hours respectively.
Use a containment vessel appropriate to the amount of meat you’re brining, but for this recipe, you can use a plastic zip lock bag or a mixing bowl. The key is to ensure the chops are thoroughly submerged and have full contact with the brining solution, so in the case of a bowl, use a plate to keep the chops under water if necessary. The same can be said for poultry. Everything must be completely submerged in the brining solution.
Ensure the brine water is cold before the meat goes in and keep the whole affair refrigerated throughout the process.
Once the brining episode is completed, take the chops, chicken or turkey out of the brine, run under cold water for a quick rinse, then dry thoroughly with paper towels. Allow the pork or poultry to sit at room temperature for a half-hour before proceeding with the recipe.
And on that final note, yes, this recipe uses mayonnaise as the medium to coat the pork chops in panko. Panko crumbs are heavier and larger than typical American bread crumbs and I found that the usual flour dredging/egg dipping process used in most pork chop coating recipes does not work as well for the adhesion qualities needed to keep the Panko crumbs on the chop.
Brined Thick Cut Panko Crusted Oven Fried Crispy Pork Chops
Brining is easy and makes a world of difference in the taste, tenderness and moisture of a baked pork loin chop.
Ingredients
- 4 cups warm tap water
- 2 cups cold tap water
- 2 cups crushed ice
- 1/2 cup fine sea salt
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp garlic, minced
- 1 tbsp black peppercorns
- 1 tbsp dried thyme
- 1 tbsp dried rosemary
- 4 thick-cut brined pork loin chops, 1-1/4" - 1-1/2" thick
- 1-1/2 to 2 cups Panko bread crumbs (like, Kikkoman)
- 3/4 cup mayonnaise
- 2 tsp Spanish or smoked paprika
- 2 tsp dried thyme
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 3/4 tsp seasoned salt (like, Lawry's)
- 8-10 grinds freshly cracked black pepper
- non-stick cooking spray (like, Pam)
Instructions
- Dissolve the salt and sugar in 4 cups of warm water, stirring until fully dissolved.
- Add the garlic, peppercorns, and herbs.
- Pour in 2 cups of cold water and 2 cups crushed ice to cool the brine quickly. It should be cold before adding the pork.
- Submerge the pork chops completely in the brine. If needed, weigh them down with a plate to keep them fully covered.
- Refrigerate for 2 hours.
- Remove the pork chops from the brine and rinse under running cold tap water. Pat dry with paper towels before cooking.
- Let the chops sit at room temperature for 20–30 minutes after brining before using in the recipe.
- Pre-heat oven to 425°F.
- Line a baking sheet or sheet pan with aluminum foil and place a wire baking rack on top.
- Combine the mayonnaise with the seasoned salt, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika thyme and pepper in a large bowl and stir well to combine.
- Coat each pork chop with the mayo mixture until all surfaces are covered.
- Lay the Panko out onto a flat surface, like a paper plate. Press the chop into the bread crumbs until thoroughly coasted.
- Place coated pork chops on the prepared wire rack. Allow the chops to rest for 30-45 minutes before placing into the oven.
- Lightly spray the surface of the chops with the cooking spray just before putting them into the oven.
- Bake the pork chops in the upper 1/3 of the oven until the coating is golden brown and cooked through or a meat thermometer registers 140°F - 145°F, for 20-30 minutes.
- Let the chops rest uncovered for 5 minutes before serving.
Notes
- If using more thinly cut pork chops, reduce the brining time to 1 hour.
- Never brine pork more than 4 hours or the pork will become too salty and the texture mushy.
- As with any meats roasting in an oven, then best way to determine success is use of a constant-read probe thermometer in the center of one pork chop, ensuring the probe is not touching bone.
