Rich, I really like fruit with my meat, and especially my pork chops. I regularly dip my cooked pork chops in applesauce, but only when I have homemade applesauce. One night last week, I didn’t have any, and I didn’t have any apples to cook. I did have canned pineapple. (click on any photo to enlarge)
First, I set the oven to pre-heat to 400°F. Next, I lightly oiled the bottom of a glass baking dish with olive oil, placed my bone-in pork chops in a single layer, but somewhat tightly, because I was too impatient to get another dish out, and started improvising what to put on top. The full list of ingredients that developed is below:
- Juicy bone in pork chops, about 8-9
- Olive oil, enough to oil the bottom of the 10 by 15 glass baking dish
- Black lava salt, several teaspoons to sprinkle liberally over the pork chops (If I didn’t have that, I would use kosher salt, like I do for most of my meat)
- Ground black pepper, sprinkled lightly, maybe 1 teaspoon total
- Diced yellow onion, a medium small one diced yielded about 1 cup
- 1-2 Tablespoons of dehydrated garlic. (That would probably be equivalent to 4-5 cloves, or about 1 Tablespoon of minced garlic)
- 2/3 of a 16 ounce can of pineapple tidbits. (I’d probably use the whole thing next time, but people ate the rest on the side)
- Brown sugar to sprinkle like strusel on top of everything
Once everything was in the baking dish, I did what I often do with chicken or pork chops. I covered the baking dish with tin foil so that the meat stays moist and retains heat for cooking for at least half of the cooking time. For this attempt, the foil was removed after 30 minutes, but I put the chops back in the oven to bake, or roast, for another 15 or so minutes. After that, I broiled them for a couple minutes to get the sugar melted and crusty on top. Some of the pineapple got browned too, which gave it a nice touch.
Here is a printable .pdf of the recipe: Pineapple Brown Sugar Pork Chops
Pork chops are one of my go-to simple, but nice meals. I make it even simpler by serving it with a side dish of corn, previously frozen in a bag. A lettuce salad (which is what we had this time) or something like sauted zucchini or asparagus to add some variation of texture would round it out. This pork chop dinner was done start to finish in just a little over an hour and was rated delicious. I was given instructions by partakers to write it down so we could do it again.
