More Porky Goodness: Wine Marinated Pork Chops

Moving from head to toe on my pig (yes, I still have a trotter in my freezer and am pondering what to do with it) I'm making it across the nice cuts. Ok, pork chops usually tend to be on the dry side, tender - yes, but quite something to chew on. I had made one of the chops a few weeks ago, after brining it for a few hours, and it was great in taste, but it still had a bit of that pork chop dryness.

So I turned to Julia Child. And read about marinades. For pork. One caught my eye, which was a wine marinade. This made sense to me - it's not just about pumping water and spice in the meat as you do with a brine, but the acid in the wine probably also helps with tenderizing the meat. After all, that's what you do with a Sauerbraten, which is a tough piece of beef that you marinate in wine for days, and that in the end turns out nice and soft.

I winged it a bit (what's wrong with me, following recipes seems next to impossible to me). I made a marinade with wine, mustard, loads of herbs and garlic, and a bit of olive oil.

The meat was fairly lean, with a wide strip of pork fat around it. I left it in the marinade for a few hours, outside on the counter, and I turned it about every half hour. Magic was happening. A few minutes on the grill, and it was transformed in one of the best pork chops I ever had.

The sauce is the leftover marinade, reduced to where it had a creamy consistency and tasted almost like a vinaigrette. Usually I'd cut the fat off, not really for calories, mostly for its nasty taste. But here?

It was wonderful. The meat was slightly pink, and together with the fat we had super tasty morsels of porky goodness....The sauce complemented the sweetness of the pork just right.