Cooking Dinners For Picky-Eaters: Baked Pork Chop Recipe For Picky Parents

Normally my cooking acrobatics revolve around getting my picky-eater children to eat the nutritious dinners I serve them. Yes, I've molded meatloaf into animal shapes, concealed vegetables under pasta and potatoes, or doused everything with a hearty helping of melted cheese. But sometimes the tables turn, usually when I'm cooking pork.

You see, when it comes to pork, I'm the picky-eater. There's something about cooked pork, maybe the dense texture, likely the flavor, that I just don't enjoy. To me pork is tasty when I can't taste it. That means it's been baked or barbecued for hours beneath a barbecue sauce and all I'm really tasting is the sauce. The one baked pork chop recipe I really like is the result of my own picky-eater ingestion-inducing tactic; I bake pork chops smothered in cream of mushroom soup and French-style green beans. My mother came up with that pork chop recipe and now I bake it for my kids. Why? -because I'm doomed to have kids who like pork. And pork, compared to other meat, is highly affordable. So when the grocer had pork chops on sale for $1.99/lb, into the basket they went. But what to do with them?

I tried a new recipe that I thought I might like. The pork chops are baked in a sweetened tomato sauce spiked with beer. This pork recipe I figured I could stomach. Keep reading for this kid-friendly, easy baked pork chop recipe.

I found this recipe for baked pork chops in the cookbook, Drink Your Beer and Eat It Too: A beer lover's cookbook with the beer facts, by Joanie Steckart. It takes about 5 minutes of prep time and bakes for 1 hour. Here's the recipe:

• 1 cup ketchup (I didn't have ketchup so I used Heinz chili sauce, - I often make this substitution for recipes calling for ketchup)
• 1 cup beer (your choice; I used a lager)
• 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 6 lean loin pork chops about 1/2-inch thick
• 6 lemon slices

"Combine ketchup, beer, and brown sugar in a small bowl and mix well. Place pork chops in a single layer in a baking dish. (I first sprayed the dish with a non-stick olive oil spray.) Place a lemon slice on each piece of meat. Pour sauce over all and bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees. Serves 6."

My children enjoyed their baked pork chops and ate all of their dinner. Chalk one up for this mom and Joanie Steckart. And what did I think? The sauce was tasty, but I still tasted the pork. But it wasn't nearly so bad as pork chops fried in a skillet or plain on the grill. The sauce did a good job. Next time I'll used a dense stout to conceal the pork flavor even more. I think this would actually taste quite good. Perhaps I could add some "Liquid Smoke" so I could pretend I'd barbecued those chops. This recipe definitely has lots of potential which for this mother of pork lovers is worth exploring.

So try it out, see what you think. If you have a pork recipe that doesn't taste like pork, please leave a link. Thanks.

 

Comments

[oil paintings]

Interesting writing! Are there any predictions that you maybe willing to divulge in order to illustrate your second section a bit more? cheers

[jessie]

woooowwww.... loooks delicious ...... mouth watering item

[Amanda]

Hi Postcollegecook, your webpage with all the different BBQ sauce descriptions is awesome. Never knew there were such regionally-specific kinds of BBQ sauce. Fun to know...and try. Didn't see a Wisconsin type. How about a cranberry grilling sauce? http://ow.ly/1imh0 We do grow lots of cranberries in WI.

[online consultation]

I really like to start on the potato and vegetables looks delicious and the last one is the port yummy.

[postcollegecook]

This recipe looks so easy and tasty - definitely adding it to my repertoire. This past weekend I tried this bbq sauce (second one on the page: http://www.divinedinnerparty.com/memphis-barbeque.html) with slow cooked pork (which I then shredded) and it was amazing - definitely flavorful enough to cover up pork flavor.