Pork chops last night were a success. Up until a few months ago I've never in my life liked pork chops, I always thought of them as "weird steak" and so tough they needed oodles of gravy, which I'm not a huge fan of anyways unless it's thanksgiving. I've only made them once so far in the SV and they were the best I've ever had, but still had room for improvement.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, Adam (TG) sent me a big bag of smoked dried onions to play around with, smoked for 16 hours turning 5LB of onions into one mostly-full gallon ziplock. The smell from this bag is intoxicating, in the most delicious of ways. This was my first try at cooking with these, I had no idea how much to use so I cut up a bigger 2LB pork loin into individual chops, salt and pepper then took out 1/4 C of the onions (wish I had weighed it, next time). I also smashed up a few cloves of roasted garlic I had left over from a head I cooked up to make some brie dip last weekend. Put all of these in the vac bag then let it sit for a few days (I knew I wouldn't have time to prep day-of). Last night I let them cook for 2 hours at 140*, then remove the onions and garlic and pat them dry and put under the broiler at 500* for about 3 minutes per side. Most of them got an herb butter parm mix slathered on top, but I did keep one as-is for control.
These were the new best pork chops I've ever had. The smokey onion taste permeated through all of the pork, not just the sections with direct contact. The one without the herb butter had the most noticeable up-front smokey flavor, however the rest with the butter were divine - the smoke was not overpowering and was truly a compliment to the porky goodness and the buttery goodness. I will call this a success, I think the 1/4 C was the right amount of onions for this amount of meat. I think the sear could have been done better, I don't know if I just cut them unevenly but the broiler didn't get as even of a burn as it usually does, next time I'll use a cast iron or really hot grill. Next up will be some sort of steak with these, I'll post an update when I get a chance to play around more. Thanks Adam!
