Pork on the Fork

This post should have gone up early in the quarantine era but what can I say, I wasn’t doing this then. I was inspired by a couple of things in making this dish. One was that the meat was reduced price because it was going to turn. Two was that I had a bottle of orange ginger VH sauce that was shaming me from the front, middle of my cupboard every time I opened it. Three was that a coworker once challenged me to find a good pork chop in a restaurant and I couldn’t do it. I went as far as to ask the Chef why you never see pork chop on menus. He explained that people don’t generally order something that simple that they can do at home, or something along those lines. So with all that inspiration, I made a big ol’ mess of chops. I made a big ol’ mess of mistakes in this one too. I put my chops in freezer bags and dumped in some salt, pepper and my orange ginger sauce. I swished it around and got nice coverage then zipped up the bags. Unbeknownst to me, I’d ripped one of the bags slightly with my vigourous swishing. This would make a considerable mess in the fridge. The plan was to marinate them in the supplied juices overnight and BBQ them. Well, it started to rain and didn’t stop for two days. That is too long to marinate cheap pork that was already starting to turn. I decided I needed to bake my chops. I did it low and slow. However, fearing that they’d be undercooked and already poisonous, I over cooked them. They weren’t dry by any means, but they were down the road a ways from perfection. I let them rest and then made my second mistake, I ate too much.

Maybe that was more than my second mistake but I was hungry and I demolished most of them, meaning to have only eaten two. The flavour from the orange ginger didn’t mesh well with the natural taste of the pork. It was not a combination I’d try again. I wasn’t hot on the sauce overall actually. But it was good enough for me to crush too much, so I’ve got that going on. I did buy more chops last time I shopped so maybe I’ll have a better story in the future.