Pork in Mushroom Sauce

The other day my wife asked me what was for dinner.  I responded that I didn’t know, and asked if anything sounded good.  She said how about pork in mushroom sauce.  I checked our freezer and we didn’t have any frozen pork chops or loin, so while I when I went out that afternoon to donate blood, I stopped by the store and picked up a package of sliced pork loin pieces.  This recipe is so easy to make, I don’t even have to ask my wife how to make it anymore.

Pork in Mushroom Sauce


Ingredients:
   Pork chops or loin pieces (enough to fill a 9x13 inch baking pan)
   2-cans cream of mushroom soup, 10½ ounce, condensed
   2-cans mushrooms sliced, 4 ounce
   2-tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
   Salt and Pepper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Place pork pieces in a single layer in the baking pan then lightly salt and pepper.  Mix the ingredients in a medium mixing bowl.  Spread sauce mixture over the pork; be sure to cover the top of each piece to prevent drying.  Cover the pan with foil and bake for 60 minutes or until the thickest piece reaches 165 degrees in the center.

In the past, I found that if I use all the mushroom sauce to cover the pork, then I usually get a boil over in the oven and have to clean it afterwards.  As I prepared the recipe this time, I filled the baking pan with the pork pieces and had three left over.  Instead of freezing these pieces, I went ahead and used another small baking pan with the three pieces and there was enough mushroom sauce to fill both pans.  Because I split the mushroom sauce between the two pans, I had no boil over in the oven.  Hurray!

These pieces are quite a bit thicker than I would normally bake (I would usually butterfly the pieces to make them thinner), so they required about 70 minutes baking before the pork pieces reached the correct internal temperature.  Once I removed it from the oven, I let it sit for about five minute to allow the carryover heat to finish cooking the pork.

We had our pork with mushroom sauce over brown rice and a green salad.  The mushroom sauce goes well with either rice or baked potato.  I like this recipe because it only requires about 10 minutes of preparation time, and then the rest is letting it cook while you do other activities.  It seems like a hearty meal and we usually have it in the fall and winter, but on a summer night it tasted great and also made for a surprisingly light and delicious meal.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Pork Shoulder Western Style Ribs - Grilled

When I made the Pork Shoulder Western Style Ribs in the oven (discussed in my June 2, 2010 post), I had about half the package of raw meat remaining.  I tossed the pork pieces into a gallon sized Ziploc bag with 1 /2 cup of apple vinegar, 1 /4 cup of grape seed oil, two tablespoons of lemon juice and one tablespoon Worcestershire sauce.  I sealed the bag and kneaded to mix all the ingredients into the meat and then put the bag in the freezer.

A few days ago, I was planning for dinners and I removed some steak to grill (see June 15, 2010 post).  I also removed the bag of pork shoulder pieces and put it in the refrigerator to thaw.  I figured that if I was going to use the barbeque for grilling the steak, I may as well also grill the pork once the steak finished.

While the steak was cooking, in a coffee mug I mixed a marinade for basting the pork while it cooked.  I mixed 1 /2 cup of apple vinegar, 1 /4 cup water, two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, one teaspoon of sea salt, and two tablespoons of olive oil in a mug.  I knew the oil would not mix with the rest of the liquids, but I use a silicon basting brush that has a bunch of little fingers that I would use each time I basted to mix the ingredients then slather them on the meat.

I placed the pork pieces in the center of the grill over the indirect heat and let them cook for 90 minutes.  Every fifteen minutes I would turn the meat over and slap on another layer of the marinade.  Last year I grilled some pork ribs (on direct heat) and I didn’t give them a basting every fifteen minutes, I ended up with some very dry and tough ribs to chew.

We ate the grilled pork ribs for dinner the following night accompanied by brown rice, broccoli, apples slices and green salad.  While they were moist and very tasty, they still had a lot of the connective tissue attached that didn’t soften when they cooked, so we would hit some very rubbery places.  The recipe that I cooked in the oven seemed to break down that tissue so that all the pieces were soft.  Both recipes left quite a bit of fat on the pork that has to be cut off when eating, but it is less than ten percent of the total volume and it comes off easily.

I don’t think I would grill the pork shoulder pieces again, but I will try one of the crock pot recipes and see how they turn out using a different cooking method.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Traveling – Colmar, France

As we neared the end of our 2003 driving trip around France, we drove through the wine region of Alsace and visited the beautiful city of Colmar. Situated in the Northeastern corner of France, Colmar has a very pronounced German influence in its architecture and food.

We enjoyed walking through the old town of Colmar as well as some of the small surrounding towns. In Kaysersberg (birthplace of Albert Schweitzer), we walked the town and watched the famous storks nesting on the rooftops.

We ventured into the hills to Le Lingnes, a hilltop site of WWI fighting. It was amazing to see that the two opposing forces dug trenches within ten feet of each other all along the hilltop. We were not able to venture off the main trails are there are still sections covered with barbed wire and large sections of the woods still filled with mines. Outside of visiting the American cemetery in Normandy, our most sobering moment was when we rounded a corner on the road back to Colmar and encountered a WWI Germany cemetery shrouded in fog and extending well beyond our visibility.

In Colmar we enjoyed a great dinner of local foods. My entrée was three types of pork on sour kraut: pork shoulder, pork slice, and pork sausage. This is the Germany influence, but I loved every bite. We ate dinner with one of the fine white wines from the region and finished dinner with an apple pastry.

Over the last several hundred years the Alsace region has been controlled by both Germany and France, I don’t know if I should have said “sehr gut” or “très bon”, which every language, it was very good!

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell

Pork Shoulder Western Style Ribs

A few days ago, I made a trip to Costco to get a few items.  I picked up some fresh tilapia so that I could make some broiled tilapia and I wanted another meat product that I could cook.  I looked at the steak but it was more expensive than I wanted to pay, (help me buy some steak - click some of my sponsors Google ads).  I looked into the pork area and saw something new (at least new to me), they were western style pork shoulder boneless pork ribs.  Not only did they look and sound good, but they were also a great price!

I purchased a package of about six pounds, took it home, and placed it in the refrigerator.  I got out my copy of How to Cook Everything and looked in the index: nothing, no mention of how to cook western style ribs.  So, off I went to check the internet and learned some interesting facts:
1.    The western style boneless ribs are actually pieces of the pork shoulder (Costco had truth in labeling) that are cut into strips to look like ribs. 
2.    They have a similar taste to ribs. 
3.    They are very easy to cook. 
4.    They are very inexpensive to purchase.

I reviewed several recipes and finally used a variation of an article titled: How to cook pork shoulder western ribs in the oven.  Here is the recipe that I used:

Ingredients:
  2-3 pounds of western pork ribs
  3 large cloves of garlic, chopped
  3 Tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
  3/4 cup brown sugar
  1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
  1/4 cup lemon juice (I used bottled lemon juice)
  1 6-ounce can tomato paste (mine was less a tablespoon I used in another recipe)
  1 Tablespoon paprika
  2 teaspoons salt
  1/2 teaspoon black pepper

In a large bowl, I mixed all the ingredients for the marinade (except the pork ribs) until they were combined to make a creamy sauce.  I got out my large glass Pyrex (9 x 13 inch) glass pan and placed as many of the ribs as would comfortably fit into the pan.  Then I poured the entire marinade over the ribs in the pan.  I made sure that some of the marinade was under each piece and all the pieces had a covering of the marinade.  I covered the pan with plastic wrap and placed it in the refrigerator to marinade for twenty-four hours.

The next day I started by heating the oven to 375 degrees in convection mode (400 degrees for non-convection).  I placed a wire rack over our roasting pan and sprayed the wire rack and the roasting pan with cooking spray.  I placed all the rib pieces on the wire rack.  Once the oven was hot, I put the pan with the ribs in the center of the oven to cook for 15 minutes.

After fifteen minutes was over, I turned over all the ribs and placed the pan back in the oven.  Our Electrolux oven has a built in temperature probe, so I inserted the probe into the thickest rib and set the oven to 165 degrees.  That way when the internal temperature of the rib reaches 165, the oven will automatically switch to a keep warm function.  If you don’t have this function, roast the ribs for another 15 minutes.

When the ribs finished cooking, I let them rest for 5 minutes then served with some optional Sweet Baby Rays barbeque sauce on the side.  The marinade made with this recipe has a sweet and tangy taste and doesn’t really need any other sauce.  The ribs were very moist and juicy; some of the very thin edges were darker in color, but not burned.  These shoulder pieces do have some fat that you will have to remove when you eat them, but it was very easy to see and remove.

I am very glad that I sprayed the roasting pan with the cooking spray as it really helped when it was time to clean the pan, we let it soak in a little hot soapy water, and most of the residue washed away.

I will make this recipe again, next time I may try grilling the pieces on indirect heat in the barbeque, though I will make sure to swab them with the marinade several times while cooking to keep them from drying out.  Now I have another three pounds of the raw ribs in the refrigerator for another recipe.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell