How to Make Texas Thick-Cut Smoked Pork Chops

[Music] those big old chops from cooper's are real showstoppers but luckily ashley is here to show us a way to make these chops at home that don't involve spending 18 hours in your own smokehouse right so i just wanted to pay attention real quick to these four 18 to 20 ounce bone-in pork rib chops these are no joke call ahead to your butcher at your local grocery store they'll be more than happy to cut these for you you probably won't find these in your meat case at your local grocery store unless your grocery store is called jurassic pork flintstone pork exactly but the way we were able to cut down on the cook time was to start the pork chops in a flavorful brine now we have six tablespoons of kosher salt and three tablespoons of granulated sugar i'm just gonna combine that there and i have one and a half quarts of cold water the brine is going to season the chops throughout and the sugar is going to help to promote some really nice browning once it's on the grill okay those are huge they are luckily i did my my workout this morning i'm just gonna wash my hands real quick okay i'm gonna put the lid on here put a lid on it put the lid on it and refrigerate these for one hour okay while the pork chops are brining it's time to make our seasoning blend for the pork chops and our barbecue sauce okay now there's something really really special about this barbecue sauce it's super tangy it's vibrant it's beautiful red crimson color it's just yeah it's really good we have two slices of bacon here and i'm just going to render this over medium heat and it's going to start to turn nice and golden brown so that's going to take about four to six minutes now while the bacon is rendering we are going to make our spice blend for the pork chops we're gonna start with two teaspoons of onion powder two teaspoons of granulated garlic one and a half tablespoons of salt and two tablespoons of cracked black pepper i'm just going to mix this together here and that again just like in the brine was kosher salt kosher salt exactly this is nice and rendered and as you can see the bacon is turning beautifully golden brown and here we have a quarter cup of grated onion and you can just do that simply on the large holes of a box grater and i'm also going to add a quarter teaspoon of salt this is going to cook for about two to four minutes now we use grated onion quite a bit when we make homemade barbecue sauce you can just grate the onion on the sides of a box grater and what that does is it busts open the cell walls of the onion then once it starts to cook the onion literally melts into the sauce and you never know it was there we have three quarters of a cup of cider vinegar you want to scrape the bottom of the pot get all those flavorful brown bits off the bottom of the saucepan i'm going to cook this about two minutes this looks nice and slightly thickened here i'm gonna add one and a quarter cups of chicken broth one cup of ketchup two tablespoons of hot sauce and then we have a half a teaspoon of liquid smoke and finally one quarter teaspoon of black pepper then i'm just going to bring this to a simmer and let it simmer for 15 minutes that sauce looks beautiful it is gorgeous yeah you're right it's kind of tomatoey red from the ketchup nice and crimsony in color i'm gonna discard the bacon because it's done its job at this point yeah this is when i would usually disagree with you and say oh we're gonna eat that bacon but all of the flavor from the bacon is in the sauce this just looks like bacon at this point okay so i'm just going to keep it warm by covering it and now it's time to turn our attention to the brined pork chops and i've patted them dry with paper towels just gonna evenly distribute the spice blend over both sides and all along the sides here and i'm just gonna pat the seasoning on here i'm just gonna wash my hands these are gonna be really smoky pork chops so here we have two cups of soaked mesquite wood chips and we've soaked these for 15 minutes and we have a nice piece of heavy duty aluminum foil seal it here nicely finish it off by cutting two two inch slits to let that mesquite wood come right through the wood chip so ashley is using mesquite wood chips here and that really is traditional for these style of pork chops in the llano texas area mesquite trees grow everywhere and they use mesquite to flavor their barbecue it has a very distinctive flavor that's really going to stand up to those super sized pork chops so in this case definitely stick with mesquite i'll grab the pork chops and let's go grill sounds good [Music] bridget it's time to get our grill ready i have four and a half quarts of charcoal and it's just covered partially with ash so it's time to pour it on one side of the grill and now the mesquite wood chips that we were talking about earlier in the wood chip packet i'm just going to put these on top of the charcoal and then we're going to put the grate just on top and i'm going to know that this grill is ready for the pork chops once i start to see some smoke coming out which should take about five minutes [Music] okay bridget i see smoke i do so that can only mean one thing it is time to clean and oil our grate that looks about right i'm just going to take some water paper towels here and some vegetable oil just run the paper towel over the grates just to grease them ever so slightly now the seasoned pork chops you will see that i am putting the bones facing the fire because the bones at this stage are going to act as a shield they're going to protect the meat they're going to let the meat cook a lot more evenly and a lot slower i'm going to put the lid on here with the vents open completely and you'll notice here that the vent is directly over the meat now what's going to happen is the smoke going to be building up nicely here and it's going to go right through the grill through the pork chops and out of the top vents and just to mention i do have the vents completely open on the bottom of the grill perfect about 45 to 50 minutes and i'm going to flip them halfway through cooking [Music] okay bridgette it's time to flip the pork chops oh you can really smell that mesquite as well and again i'm gonna keep that bone facing the fire they look great i'm gonna put the lid back on and let them finish cooking okay another 20-25 minutes [Music] oh yep they are beautiful you know they have a little bit of that smoked meat look it takes on a kind of a warm tinge to the meat i love that you know that that's good food all right so i'm just going to take a quick temperature here 140 degrees perfect nailed it nailed it i'm going to transfer the chops to our carving board here oh i'm hungry oh yeah these are mammoth just gonna tent this loosely with some aluminum foil and we're gonna head inside and finish our chop sounds good [Music] okay it's almost time to eat i'm just gonna finish these pork chops that have been resting with a little bit of that barbecue sauce we made earlier and we have re-warmed the sauce now be nice and generous at this step now i'm going to carve the bone off here just like so and i'm going to slice these oh juicy with a slight pink ring around the exterior from that misquite smoke good indication of a good good smoking yeah i'm so excited for you to try this my mouth is watering i can barely contain myself incredible looking chops these look good oh let's tuck in yeah really savory oh my gosh tangy sauce and this pork is some of the most moist pork i've ever had in my life no lie she's absolutely telling the truth this pork is so so juicy and it's perfectly cooked i'm a happy girl are you good well making these amazing texas thick cup pork chops at home begins at your butcher get 18 to 20 ounce bone-in rib chops and they're huge grind the chops in salt and sugar and then apply a savory rub just before grilling them with a pity mesquite wood chip packet finish the chops with a baked and boosted barbecue sauce and there you have it from cook's country a real showstopper texas thick cup pork chops texas sized y'all thanks for watching cook's country from america's test kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say hi now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later alligator

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 90,480

Keywords: texas pork chops cooks country, thick-cut pork chops, thick cut pork chops, pork chops, pork chops recipe, grilled pork chops, smoked pork chops, how to grill pork chops, grilling tips, learn to cook, pork recipes, grilling recipes, cooks country, cook's country, cooking show, cooking tv show

Id: mbRmDhgSt4k

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 28 2019