Glazed Pork Chops

When I buy pork, I tend to buy tender loin. It's easy to cook, for me at least, and it generally comes out moist and tender. I have trouble with pork chops. I'm good at eating them, but I've never had much luck cooking them. They always seem to come out dry and tough. This is doubtless because I'm thrifty (read: cheap), so I tend to buy the cheaper boneless cuts. I probably overcook them a bit, too. When I went shopping this past week, the family pack of bone-in chops was only about $6. Awesome! So I bought them and, because I really wanted to get them right, I went in search of a good recipe. I wanted something that was relatively easy but wouldn't dry out the meat. Go go Pinterest! When I stumbled on this recipe, I hoped I'd hit the mark.

The Pin: Glazed Pork Chops by Budget Bytes

Difficulty: 3 (1 = Very Easy, 10 = Super Hard)

Ingredients Assemble!

Hells yeah brown sugar!

The rub in the bowl is made up of the spices you see in the picture, brown sugar (the main spice) garlic, cayenne pepper, paprika, salt and black pepper. Budget Bytes says you can mix whatever spices you like with the brown sugar, but I went with their spice rub suggestion. Saute on medium/high for five minutes on each side. My chops were on the larger side, so as suggested I also put them in the oven for five minutes on 350. In fact, the chops I used were so big I could only fit two in a saute pan at once. Since they're pretty easy to make, I did two this day and put the other two (already rubbed) in the fridge to cook the following day.

After five minutes in the oven.

Lookin' tasty! Left = Mine, Right = Budget Bytes

Mine came out pretty close considering they're clearly a very different cut. A little less glazy, I suppose, but still sufficiently covered in sweet gooey sugar. How were they, you ask. Wonderful! I grew up eating pork chops with apple sauce, so I love sweet pork. The brown sugar rub was perfect! It gave it the perfect amount of glaze.The meat had a wonderfully sweet flavor, and the cayenne and other spices gave just a tiny bit of heat. As for the texture, they were moist and tender and lovely. To be fair, my chops were fatty and bone-ful which made it easier to maintain moisture.

Still, these were the best chops I've had in a really long time. I didn't even use the homemade apple sauce I had ready in case of dryness. (I still ate it, just by itself.) I'm almost ashamed to admit this, and I don't usually do this, but I liked them so much I picked up my chop to gnaw at the meat around the bone. Nom!

Final Rating: 8.5 (1 = Bad, 10 = Best thing ever!)

Note: The only reason I didn't give this recipe a higher rating is because, while my husband liked them well enough, he didn't share in my complete and utter love for this dish. For him, I knocked the rating down a tiny bit.