Pickle Pepperoncini Pork Chops?!?!

Yes my friends, I said it pickle pepperoncini pork chops! I'm a huge pickle fan, my favorite pickles are Claussin Pickles. They're never heated so they stay nicely crisp. Anyways back to the meal. So you might think that anything pickle flavored besides a pickle would be gross but I will have to ask you to think twice.

I found this recipe online and it only called for pickle juice and salt and pepper. So I tried it and well yeah it was good. I only marinated it the first time for about an hour or so in about one cup of juice and it had a slight pickle flavor.

Well I decided to try doing it for longer so I ended up stabbing the pork chop with a fork a couple of times to get some nice pores in the meat. Honestly I don't think it did anything but make holes in the meat. We soon found out we wouldn't be able to eat them that night so I froze them.

A couple of days later we decided to thaw them in the fridge and have them for dinner. I will tell you what, those are some gooooooooood chops! I also like to cook Mac n Cheese with my pork chops but you can use any side that you like.

Well the pickle juice is a really powerful flavor and I had pepperoncini juice in the fridge. The pepperoncini juice is actually a lot milder of a marinate than one would think. So tonight I have had pork marinating for one day in the fridge ( do not marinate in the fridge for more than 24 hours or the meat will be chewy).

The marinade was about
1/2   C. Pickle Juice
2/3   C. Pepperoncini Juice
2   TBS Lemon Peppper
1   TBS Salt ( Leave the salt out if you think the juice will be salty enough)
1/2   C. Extra Virgin Olive Oil

I use this marinade for 3 pork chops bone in. I use bone in because the bone creates more flavor but you don't have to because then you are paying for the bone weight when you purchase them.

Place meat in a bag and pour ingredients over the top of them. I put the marinade baggie into another baggie incase of leaking.

Take meat out of fridge about half hour before cooking and place on plate out of the marinade so they can get the chill of the fridge off of the meat and excess juices can come out of the meat. The meat will have a greyish color to it, that's fine it just means the acid in the marinade cooked it a little. You never want to cook fridge cold meats they won't cook evenly. Please discard the marinade unless you want to use it as a sauce but then you have to bring the marinade juice to a boil.

Now for cooking I use a cast iron skillet so I can get a good brown color on the meat. Put about 2 TBS of olive oil in the pan and turn the heat up to 7 or 8 on an electric stove and medium high on gas. ( I'm not familiar with gas ranges so please adjust for your stove top).

Make sure that the pan is hot enough. You want the oil to be kind of smoking, it'll look almost like steam coming off of the pan. I like to sprinkle a little garlic salt on the pork chops before I cook them.

Go ahead and place the pork chops in a pan. Be careful as oils will splash when you put the meat in and we don't want anyone getting hurt.

I cook the pork for about 5-7 minutes per side. It really depends on the thickness of the pork chops. For thin cut you don't really need to cook them longer than 4 minutes a side. If you are unsure you can ask your butcher how long they recommend cooking them.

You should have a little browning on either side. ( I keep trying to upload a photo but it won't let me do it so I'll try again tomorrow).

So go ahead and remove the pork chops from a pan put them on a plate and you are ready to serve.

I would like to say that I tried them today and I personally would like to add more of the pepperoncini juice but that's me and I like a lot of spice to my food.

Well I hope you tried to make this I really think it's good and adventurous! Don't be scared of food, try new things and remember most of all have fun with it!