Food Worth Posting About

More often than not when I try new recipes they flop big time. But lately I've scored not one but TWO tasty temptations. I figured I'd better post them here for future reference or I'll never remember where to find them. Like the Taco Soup recipe, which I know BFF Jen has looked up half a dozen times here because she lost her recipe in the move nearly 5 years ago! (Sorry if that posts shows up in your feed reader again, I edited it to add a tag for recipes.)

Anyway, I've made two things in the past week or so that was worth remembering. First up are some tangy baked pork chops. Here's the original recipe, but I made few minor changes leading to this:

Baked Pork Chops

1 tablespoon soy sauce 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 1 teaspoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons brown sugar 2 tablespoons ketchup 4 pork chops, trimmed

Mix marinade ingredients together and place in a zip top bag with the chops. Refrigerate for an hour. Or two. Or five. Or not at all. Whatever.

(Here's the kicker)
Mix a SECOND batch of the sauce and set aside until you're ready to cook.

Preheat oven to 350. Dump chops and liquid in a baking dish. Bake 15 minutes. Turn over each chop, cook another 15 minutes*.

When you take them out of the oven you'll notice the sauce is very very thin. Heat up the second batch of sauce to boiling in a saucepan. Remove the chops from the baking dish, leave the thin leftover marinade in the pan, spoon the fresh sauce over the chops. Yum

Served up with a couple of veggies and some tasty bread, couldn't be easier. If you want to make it even easier, buy chops ahead and freeze them in the marinade, then they soak while they defrost and all you have to do is throw them in the oven and make the sauce. Dinner's ready!

*Please note the original recipe says to cook for an hour. Those chops must be a lot bigger than the ones I buy, which would likely disintegrate after an hour. The 30 minutes is based on some basic on-sale less than an inch thick loin chops. Giant chops will likely take the hour.

The other super tasty thing I made last week was a roasted chicken. Here's the original recipe.
The only thing I did different was instead of a whole chicken I had half a bag of leg quarters I needed to do something with, so I baked those on top of chunks of onion. Worked just fine. As a matter of fact, sitting on the onion kept the chicken from sitting in the juice that built up. Next time I find a whole chicken on sale, you better believe I'll be making this again. I'm pasting the recipe here just in case the link ever dies. This is so worth keeping!

Roasted Chicken

4 teaspoons salt 2 teaspoons paprika 1 teaspoon onion powder 1 teaspoon dried thyme 1 teaspoon white pepper

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1/2 teaspoon black pepper 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 2 onions, quartered 2 (4 pound) whole chickens

	In a small bowl, mix together salt, paprika, onion powder, thyme, white pepper, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder. Remove and discard giblets from chicken. Rinse chicken cavity, and pat dry with paper towel. Rub each chicken inside and out with spice mixture. Place 1 onion into the cavity of each chicken. Place chickens in a resealable bag or double wrap with plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight, or at least 4 to 6 hours.
	Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
	Place chickens in a roasting pan. Bake uncovered for 5 hours, to a minimum internal temperature of 180 degrees. Let the chickens stand for 10 minutes before carving.

In all fairness, we ended up not eating this as a meal. The day I was making it we ended up going out of town unexpectedly, but I had already prepped it and had to cook it so I did, sampled a piece, and put the rest in the fridge to deal with when we got home. The piece I tasted was wonderful. I won't be buying any more $6 rotisserie chickens. Since we didn't eat it while it was hot, I pulled all the meat off the bones and stuck it in the freezer. I have half a dozen or more recipes I can think to use it in - stir fry, chicken fajitas, pastas, dumplings... Maybe I should post those as I make them. You might have to remind me of that, though, because you know I'll forget about it in about 10 minutes.