Smothered Pork Shoulder Chops
Pork Shoulder Chops, cooked down for a couple of hours with onions, peppers and smothered in a Southern style brown gravy; meant to be eaten with the Kitchen Tapestry recipe for Southern Style Collard Greens.
In 2000, I saw a late night pilot on the Food Network by a southern chef, Michael Nischan. He never made it past the pilot and I think I may have seen him one other time on some other cooking show. Sad, really, as I thought his on-camera presence was pretty entertaining and his recipes seemed easy to follow. But for a network that has devolved into little more than a game show network centered on food, this isn't surprising.
At any rate, Chef Michael cooked this recipe on the air and I was dying to try it. I have since made it many times and it is true Southern comfort food. The secret is in getting the right kind of chops. Most pork chops you see in your grocer’s meat case are loin chops. These are the kind of chops with a bone that resembles a T-bone steak. The second kind of pork chop you’ll commonly see are pork rib chops. As the name implies, the chop has just one rib bone and is sometimes sold boneless. Both of those chops lack the stamina and marbling you need for this recipe, which is a pork shoulder chop. These chops are cut from a bone-in pork shoulder roast and they are perfect for the long cooking process of this recipe, and the thicker and fattier, the better. You'll probably have to ask your butcher to cut them special.
The manner in which this special chop will be cooked is a Southern method called “Smothered”. While braising is a culinary methodology of cooking tough, large cuts of meat in a small amount of liquid in an enclosed environment, like a Dutch oven or crock pot, smothering is cooking food completely submerged in its own gravy that was started with a roux. Not surprisingly, the technique was created in New Orleans, and in fact, the word “étouffée” (as in Crawfish Étouffée) is the Cajun word for “smothered.” When cooking small, tough cuts of meat in this manner, it is a form of braising employing liquid and time to tenderize the meat.
A Perfect Pairing
Chef Nischan presented an accompanying side dish for his Smothered Pork Shoulder Chops: a venerable southern, soul-food dish if there ever was one, and one that has been with Kitchen Tapestry’s recipe collection since the beginning, Southern Style Collard Greens. For convenience, I have included the Collard Green Recipe below. Once you make Collard Greens this way, it will ruin you for life and you’ll never want them any other way.
Smothered Pork Shoulder Chops
Ingredients
- 4 bone-in pork shoulder chops, cut 1-1/2" thick
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 tbsp Morton's Natures Seasons Seasoning Blend
- 3 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 green pepper, cored and sliced
- 1 large yellow or sweet onion, diced
- 1 lb fresh button mushrooms, sliced
- 3 cups Kitchen Tapestry recipe for Ham Hock Stock, heated to a simmer
- 1/8 tsp sea salt
- 1/8 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 stick butter
- 1/2 tbsp Kitchen Bouquet
Instructions
- Combine the flour and seasoning blend in a mixing bowl with a whisk, then pour out flat onto a paper plate.
- Press each pork chop on both sides into the flour mixture and shake off any excess.
- Heat a cast iron Dutch oven with the vegetable oil over a medium heat. Brown the pork chops in batches if necessary, approximately 4 minutes per side.
- Remove the chops from the Dutch oven and set aside.
- Add another tablespoon or two of oil to the Dutch oven if needed. Increase the heat to medium high and sauté the onions and green peppers in the hot oil until they begin to caramelize, stirring frequently.
- When the onions and peppers are becoming browned, melt the butter into the Dutch oven. Add the mushrooms and sprinkle the remaining flour over all the vegetables and cook, stirring constantly, for 10-12 minutes or until the mushrooms have thoroughly collapsed and are beginning to brown.
- Pre-heat the oven to 325°.
- Stir in the hot hock stock and until thickened and smooth. Add the Kitchen Bouquet and stir to blend.
- Return the pork chops to the Dutch oven along with any juices that had accumulated. Submerge the chops into the gravy.
- Put the lid on the Dutch oven place in the middle of the pre-heated oven.
- Cook 2 hours, or until the pork is very tender.
Southern Style Collard Greens
Ingredients
- 3-4 smoked ham hocks
- 3-4 fresh ham hocks
- 1- 1/2 gallons water to cover
- 1 gallon ham hock stock
- 4 large bunches of collard greens chopped into 4-inch pieces
- 1 large onion peeled
- 1 jalapeno pepper, split in half lengthwise, seeds removed
- 1 26 oz carton chicken stock (like, Swanson's or Kitchen Basics)
- 1/2 tbsp black pepper
- 1/2 tbsp fine sea salt
- malt vinegar to taste
Instructions
- If you can find both fresh and smoked ham hocks, use them. If you can only find one or the other, you should prefer the smoked ones. Place ham hocks in a stock pot large enough to hold the hocks, leaving 6' of free space at the top of the pot.
- Pour enough cold water over the hocks to cover by 3". Bring to a rapid simmer over a medium high heat.
- A thick foam will build on the top of the stock. Carefully remove all of the foam. Reduce the heat to low and simmer at least 3 hours, but you can go 5 or 6 hours if you wish.
- Constantly skim the clear fat that builds at the top of the stock.
- When the stock is done, you can take each hock out of the stock and cut out some of the innermost tender meat and set it aside. Don't use the outermost flesh of the hock as it is tough and chewy.
- Discard the hocks. Don't add the meat back to the stock until you start the greens.
- See Notes below in how to prepare the collard leaves for cooking.
- After removing the ham hocks from the stock and separating the edible meat, return the meat to the pot and bring the broth to a rolling simmer over medium high heat.
- Add the whole onion and the two jalapeño halves to the pot.
- Add a handful of collards at a time, keeping the broth simmering.
- When all the collard greens are in the pot, simmer 4 hours until the leaves are tender.
- Add the sea salt and pepper.
- Serve the greens in a soup bowl with plenty of the pot liquor, and a shake or two of malt vinegar.
Notes
To prepare collards:
- Separate the leaves and ensure they are triple-rinsed in cold water.
- Cut out the tough white stem and center vein from the leafy green part, leaving only the top tender veins in the top part of the leaf.
- After removing the stems and tough center vein, put 3-4 collard leaves on top of one another and roll them up like a cigar or a cinnamon roll.
- Cut the rolled leaves into 1-1/2" to 2" slices perpendicularly to the roll. Then chop the rolled slices 2-3 times perpendicularly, so you end up with 2-3" pieces of collard leaves.
This dish is recommended with Kitchen Tapestry's recipe for Smothered Pork Shoulder Chops. If you are preparing the Ham Hock Stock for the Southern Collard Greens recipe, reserve 3 cups of the stock for the Smothered Pork Shoulder Chop recipe.
