Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I found a recipe for a quick cure pork chop that is smoked so it comes out a bit of bone in hammy-ish without being too salty. I gave it a try with recipe and results following, I will be making a few mods to this, but overall it is both tasty and promising. The original recipe called for a large piece of bone-in loin that is cut into chops after curing. But that didn't work for me, I ended up with about fifteen 1 inch thick pork chops.



As you may notice, they come with thick fat around the outside that needs to be trimmed off and saved for rendering later.

The cure recipe calls for Morton Tender Quick. And I just happened to have received a 2 pound bag a few days before. Making about 1 quart of wet cure (per 6 chops) with the MTQ and a bit of rosemary, I brined the chops for 24 hours. Then rinsed them off and they went onto the Weber/Smokenator.



Where the first batch pretty well took up all the space I had for smoking on the food grate. The pouch in the Smokenator contained hickory chips or shavings. I make about three of those and end up getting about 2 hours of smoke out of the three packages. The next image shows the chops as they are done smoking. No more wood pouches, but a couple of sneaky hotdogs snuck their way over the hotter part of the Smoker.



The theory was that I would smoke at 175F or so, then after the wood was used up, kick the temps to the 240F area to finish the chops off. They picked up some nice color from the smoke and finish.



Overall they were nicely hammy, wonderful flavor of cured pork and hickory smoke. The failure was they were mostly too dry. The cook time was almost 5 hours and I was worried about what temperature to get them too. But even with the dryness factor, they were really nice. If they had been moist, it would have been a five star event.

And I have plans for that. Next time I will cure/brine them. Probably with Prague Powder #1 which is a lot cheaper. I will smoke at as low a temp as I can for 2 hours again. And then I will cool and bag them for a trip to the Sous Vide Contraption. I will take them to 138F - 140F so they lose any of the raw-ish look and are a consistent pink from the cure an cooking. Hopefully the moisture will be better and they will not dry out so much. I may dial the PID controller down a couple of degrees, to balance presentation color to moisture content.

But these are really worth considering for you folks that smoke or bbq. The original recipe is found here.

We've done these a few times now and I'm getting close to mastering them (at least by our standards). I make my own replacement cure for Tender Quick these days and soak them for a good 48 hours. If the chops are over 1 inch thick, I inject them with the brine. I have smoked them to 120F and pulled them to finish sous vide once. Those were fine. I've started smoking them with hickory chips for close to four hours, until they get to 135F and pulling them. We store them for later use, but our favorite way to finish is over charcoal on the grill. We have a sample of Tatonka Dust (used as a rub) that will hit the stores in the future and it goes spectacularly on the chops. Not sure the finishing temps but grilling them for a few over hot coals still ends with a very moist and wonderfully flavorful hammy flavored chop.

It's now my signature dish when we have friends over. The Weber 22.5 inch kettle has been such a hit, I've got their little Smokey Joe 14.5 inch kettle on the way so we can do smaller amounts more conveniently. I really like that since they are cured and smoked, they will keep quite awhile in the fridge and almost forever in the freezer! Then a bucket of charcoal in the kettle and we are eating like piggish royalty! Heh heh!

Hmmm ... as our smoking weather starts to expire, I think I might well try this on the WSM. Thanks for the idea!