4 Levels of Pork Chops: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

hello i'm onika and i'm a level one chef i'm lorenzo and i'm a level two chef i'm frank i'm a chef instructor at the institute of culinary education and i've been cooking professionally for 24 years this pork chop is uh something that i don't cook that often but when i do my family loves it i'm filipino you guys we love pork this is actually really really almost picture perfect pork chops you're in for something today my favorite thing about pork chops especially pork chops on the bone is this nice layer of meat in between the fat but to ensure that they're super juicy we're gonna brine them first [Music] so what i'm using today is the center cut pork chop it's boneless it's about a half inch thick you don't want to get a thick pork chop because it's going to be too big and it's going to dry out you don't want that please give me a center cut bone-in inch thick at least pork chop you want something fat this will just protect it from overcooking today we're using berkshire pork chops this is a fatty pig it's a heritage breed pig this one is lovingly cared for fed really good feed and food and then served up to us first we're going to start with the pepper get it on both sides what i normally do is i i let them kiss and make it now right just a pinch of salt i will do both sides with these lovely easy peasy seasonings again like season now i'm to sprinkle some cayenne and then obey last when it comes to a really nice piece of meat like this i don't want to do a marinade on this i want to taste the pork so one thing that i like to do is do a prime basically a brine is just a salty solution of water spices and herbs so the brine on top of the fat on this pork chop is gonna ensure that it's juicy no one would not brine a pork chop i would brine a pork butt so i'm going to start off with my water apple cider vinegar goes in light brown sugar salt a bay leaf some black peppercorns and some chili flake i'm going to let it start to come to a simmer and while that's getting hot i'm actually just going to take my time break it in half and then i'm going to get some garlic this goes right in so now you want this to sit for about 10 minutes just so the spices can just ease on down ease on down the road into the pork chop you can see it came to a boil give it one last stir and now we chill it down some people like to put it in a wet marinade and let it sit but i think that this is the best way to do it i need to marinate in my traditional ingredients my friend i love garlic moving on to the thai chilies we'll just mince again vince vincent's mix thai chili peppers are having just enough heat for me to actually enjoy the chili peppers as well as the pork itself today we're going to be frying these babies up but before that i have to work on my coating i'm going to season my flour with some black pepper more obey so my secret sauce is obey seasoning normally people use it for seafood but it's great or meat whisk it around i love pepper and yes i'm also adding actual peppercorns that's very traditional in filipino cooking beautiful ginger powder spice brown sugar yummy yummy yummy apple cider vinegar of course soy sauce again see this is where the salt comes into place oyster sauce so this is another salty bit right here it will add some serious zing and beautiful flavor lemon lime soda which will help the carbonation and the acid helps tenderize the meat so just beat up your egg beat it up beat it up so we're gonna coat it one time the flour make sure that you get it all and then we're gonna take it and we're gonna dip it in the egg wash it's getting pretty pretty pretty you good yup i feel like i want to dip it once more i like to dredge them because it gives it a crispy thick coating why have a fried food if you don't have the crunch you you want the crunch in it okay the marinade is ready for company so what we're gonna do now is we're gonna allow these fun little pork chops to join the party and have a little summer swim into the lovely jubbly spicy and sweet marinade i like to brine in a ziploc bag and here's the reason if i try and take these pork chops and put them in a bowl only a certain amount of my brine i'm going to need double the amount of brine it's going to cover my pork chops but as you see if i take these and put them in a bag and i pour my brine over and i can squeeze out most of the air then get totally covered by the brine i'm gonna let these chill in the fridge for about five or six hours and then we'll come back and cook i'm gonna let these guys rest and watch some tv in the refrigerator for about two hours okay now i'm gonna make my sauce that i use to baste my pork chops oyster sauce banana ketchup very similar to regular ketchup but it has actually no tomatoes in it i have sesame seed oil ooh chihuahua i could really put this on any protein i think i'm going to reserve a little bit here for dipping or adding extra at the end why not all right my pork chops are ready so now it's time to fry them i'm gonna place my pork chop in the pan look at it you just let them start frying up do you hear it you're like oh my god they're having conversations which i talked about it's good and hot in here before i grill the pork chops uh i'm actually going to kind of coat this beautiful grill pan with some just oil it's going to get a little smoky in here so prepare yourself and away we go yeah one and two i love grilling any protein because i love the char that a grill gives you i love the sizzle and it's just enjoyable for people if you have guests as you can notice here i am using a cast iron pan cast iron is going to give us a good sear and hold on to that heat we're going to take our pork chops out of the brine they smell wonderful we're going to put them on this rack to let them drain and even though it does have a brine on it i'm going to hit it with a little bit of salt and pepper just a little i'm going to drop these in the pan i always drop away from me and now we leave it alone i'm actually gonna turn this baby up i want it to sit down whenever i put it on a pan the temperature goes down let's get it back up to town i wish i could just take this and put this in a box so i kind of flipped my pork chops a couple times just because i don't time anything out but you want to get a pork chop a fried pork chop you got to come to somebody's house with a big mama it takes a lot of woman to be able to fry pork chop is all i'm saying a lot of woman it is a done deal look at this it is looking so good and what how look at that you guys don't let the dark color deter you that is what you want let's give this a turn we're getting some nice caramelization it's a little dark but i'm not too worried about it that's just the sugar from the brine and again we're just going to kind of leave it be let it do its thing the top part is pretty much cooked already it's safe for me to baste okay lovely it's just an extra tang to this beautiful marinated pieces of pork chop so you see that we have this beautiful piece of fat on top you cannot neglect that right so i'm going to stand them up and hold them there to make sure that that fat starts to render out and get crispy my ancestors would just say do not grill this without having those beautiful sides of that grilled as well i'm listening to you if i poke at this and it's really still soft that means that it's really not cooked yet but if i poke at it and it springs back and feels a little firm then i know that it's starting to cook up and it's starting to get the temperature that i want cook your pork chop until it's done please not pink in the middle not all that little shishi fufu stuff it's a fried dish cook it let me just show you what i did beautiful spicy grilled filipino marinated pork chops basted in a beautiful sauce help me it's already looking crispy because of the egg wash that's the secret ingredient right there all right you happy with your outfit here you go just drain it on the paper towel we are done so i'm close to where i want this to be and what i'm going to do now is add some of my aromatics here right i have a little bit of garlic i have some thyme springs and i'm going to add some of my butter i'm adding the whole butter in here and i'm just gonna kind of baste this over the top and now i'm gonna let them rest okay what was that you want me to take your temperature 143 hello it's fine with me now i'm gonna make my chimichurri sauce now chimichurri sauce is basically an herb sauce it's from central south america what's great about this is we're gonna put it on the pork chop the oil is gonna kind of drizzle over the sides and give us some of those nice herby and grassy flavors so i'm going to use all of the scallion the top and the bottom and i'm just going to rough chop it you basically just dump everything in and let it run garlic's going to go in i'm using a fresno chili here right into my food processor fresh oregano parsley and cilantro have extremely different flavors then we're gonna hit it with some salt and pepper a fair amount of salt some fresh cracked black pepper and i find with a chimichurri sauce if you use all extra virgin olive oil it overpowers the whole thing and that's all you taste so i like to cut it with just a little bit of vegetable i love cherry vinegar whizz it up so my pork chops are draining and now i'm going to make my gravy what you need to do is you need to pour off this oil keep about two teaspoons of oil dirty grease is the best grease add my flour and i know this gravy mask is a blast from the past and you probably used to have like a little one but i'm gonna take a cap full just a little bit browning i want my gravy a little thicker so i'm going to put a little bit more flour in it and you just you know whisk a stir look my gravy has a little bit of crunch in it because we use the same pan when you make a barbecue sauce you have a universal condiment which means you can use it on anything tomorrow i will put it on my eggs and bacon so now it's time to plate this baby you know a lot of people use applesauce on pork chops so i just like a green apple i like extra sauce on everything this looks beautiful you guys so we got this beautifully fatty crispy pork chop that we're going to take this beautiful like vinegary and herbal sauce earthy sauce put over the top so that when we cut into it we're gonna have a little bite of that sauce with every little bite of meat this is a work of art now i'm gonna take the gravy and these are my pork chops and this is my pork chop [Music] and this is my pork chop here we go guys oh my gosh it's juicy it's tender it didn't take me 20 years the crunch makes it all the better this is home cooking at its best i taste oyster sauce it tastes the sweetness from the sugar banana ketchup there's a little heat but it's a controlled heat it's a help you taste this wonderful meat heat it's just honestly my heritage in a bite the brine does its work it makes it super juicy the acid and the herbs in the chimichurri complement the pork and don't take over but it's absolutely delicious pork chops are a delicious dish that can be made so many different ways let's see how each of our chefs made theirs onika and lorenzo both use supermarket pork also called conventional pork it's from white leaner pigs raised on farms where the pigs live in close quarters under climate control and are harvested young around six months they are fed a diet of clean water corn and soy frank used berkshire fork a blackbody heritage hog which is a specific true purebred they have been raised food for hundreds of years and many generations heritage hogs are fed diets that allow them to be naturally omnivorous meaning they eat both plants and animals they're pasture-raised and free of antibiotics this meat is higher in fat very tender and darker in color to reflect the diet of the hog as well as a slightly higher ph which also affects flavor and the meat is so juicy onika's boneless pork chop came from the loin which is a naturally lean cut of pork it's a longer section on a hog with 17 ribs as opposed to beef with 13 ribs center loin is identifiable by a tea bowl that separates the lighter loin meat and the darker tenderloin meat lorenzo also used a chop from the loin but his had the bone in which acts as a heat insulator slowing the cooking process and can help keep the meat from curling as it cooks if you serve this to your friends they are not leaving frank's berkshire pork chops are known for well-marbled fat so they're going to have more succulents than the conventional pork chops however the thicker the chop the longer it'll take to cook frank cooked them to medium which was perfect for keeping the flavor aroma and texture of his pork chops pork should have some fat or a large amount of fat on it and these berkshire pork chops are perfect it's pretty easy to season the surface of pork but not as easy to penetrate the meat with flavor flavors are mainly molecules that are carried by fats and meat is mostly water so the flavor molecules don't move inside the meat easily lorenzo did a wet marinade that included seven up most sodas are highly acidic with enough sugar to mask the tartness that's associated with acidity the acidity helps to hydrolyze proteins and make the meat tender on the outside frank made a brine for his pork chops brining has two main effects on the meat initially salt disrupts the protein structure of the connective tissue it also interacts with other proteins to increase water holding capacity thereby absorbing the seasoned water in the brine within the meat cells since there's more water in the cells when the pork is cooked water is still lost to some extent but it's balanced by water absorbed from the brine that's why perfectly brined meat is so juicy after cooking with modern pork especially a heritage breed like this you can eat this pink cook your pork chop until it's done please for a long time pork was associated with a parasite called trichinellus feralis that was killed at higher temperatures which is why people associate higher cooking temperatures with pork the conventional pork industry essentially eradicated this parasite a while ago making transmission extremely rare but the higher cooking temperature stuck with us unnecessarily i have no idea what gravy master is i just use it because that's what my mother used i told you guys maybe rose knows gravy master is a brown seasoning sauce made from blended celery onion parsley and garlic with sugar vinegar and salt it's colored dark brown with caramel coloring and flavor is enhanced by hydrolyzed vegetable protein hpv is made from protein hydrolysis or breakdown of soy or wheat gluten it gives an umami taste from the glutamic acid and is really convenient to use it's pretty salty so you don't want to use too much if onika's mom uses it it's okay with me lorenzo used an ingredient common in the philippines called banana ketchup it's made with bananas sugar vinegar and spices and it's naturally a brownish gold color as you might expect from the bananas but sometimes it's dyed red to mimic tomato ketchup it's very sweet and tangy and paired well with lorenzo's grilled pork chop frank made a chimichurri which is an argentinian condiment with an intense and delicious herbal base with a splash of vinegar for tang and to set the beautiful green color the slight acidic and herbal combination is such a refreshing complement to his very rich berkshire pork as usual frank really elevated his dish i know some people think that cilantro is soapy tasting i have no idea why maybe rose knows there's a genetic component to the taste perception of cilantro the main aroma compound in cilantro is decanel a fatty aldehyde that some people's sensory receptors read as soapy or associated with cleaning products as the results of a genetic variation affecting olfaction next time you're making pork chops for a quick weeknight supper or for dinner party with friends we hope you'll take some of these tips from our three extraordinary chefs

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 1,043,796

Keywords: 4 levels, 4 levels of pork chops, best pork chop recipes, best pork chops, best pork chops recipe, chimichurri, chimichurri recipes, chimichurri sauce, chimichurri sauce recipe, epi 4 levels, epicurious, epicurious 4 levels, expert pork chops, how to cook pork chops, make chimichurri, make pork chops, making pork chops, pork chop, pork chop chimichurri, pork chop recipes, pork chops, pork chops recipe, pork recipe, pork recipes, quick pork chop recipe, quick pork chops

Id: zgoYvTH9bZQ

Length: 18min 37sec (1117 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 24 2021