Lampe - Pork chop: 60 recipes for living high on the hog

This book is dedicated to all the hardworking American pork producers. Our meat cases are full of perfect pork because of you. Thanks!

Text copyright 2013 by Ray Lampe.
Photographs copyright 2013 by Jody Horton.
Photographs on pages 15 and 16 courtesy of National Pork Board.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4521-2980-8

The Library of Congress has previously cataloged this title under ISBN 978-1-4521-1367-8

Designed by Vanessa Dina
Prop and food styling by Kate LeSueur
Cooking by Angela Howe
Typesetting by DC Type

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Id like to thank all the good folks from the American pork industry for creating such a wonderful product to work with. Thanks to Sandi for putting up with me and tasting all those pork chops. Thanks to Bill LeBlond, Amy Treadwell, Doug Ogan, Marie Oishi, Vanessa Dina, Tera Killip, Peter Perez, and David Hawk at Chronicle Books for keeping me around and making me look so good. Thanks to Scott Mendel for always finding a way to make things work. Last, but not least, thanks to Traci Rodemeyer for all the help and friendship.

Overstatement among food writers is so prevalent, its like a tsunami from an earthquake hitting during a hurricane. So let me meekly declare that the pork chop is the finest cut of meat any human could ever hope to eat. It also happens to feed our most primal urge.

Before man learned to walk upright and make reservations on his phone for a table for two at the place where cooks make pea-size food using liquid nitrogen, he roamed the earth in search of meaty goodness to eat with the teeth that nature put at his disposal. Being smaller than a cow, slower than a rabbit, nicer than a bear, and meatier than a bird, pigs made for a dandy meal.

Once caught, there were many parts of the animal one could consume. My guess is that the process of elimination led the species Homo sapiens to follow its taste buds to the most flavorful options between the parenthetical snout and tail. Add some fire to the process and you can see why the pork chop would stand out immediately to our ancestor.

First of all, with its T-shaped bone, the chop comes with its own handle. This is no small thing. Just as with their very good friends, the teeth, opposable thumbs were created for using. Food that came with a built-in place to grab made eating dinner easier while running from things that wanted to eat us as well. Its the circle of life. It flows through us all.

Yes, the ribs are delicious. But you have to eat a hundred of them to make a meal (not that there is anything wrong with that). Indeed, the leg offers a handle, but there are only four of those per pig and only two of them are tasty. The belly is the tempting candy jar of the animal, but you can only eat so much of that before the pigs start looking at you like dinner. Primitive man may have been primitive, but he found the tender part of the porker in the chop region and made it work for him.

I learned to cook pork chops by watching my father. I was lucky enough to grow up at a time when gas grills were starting to be affordable. My dad, who did not make an enormous sum of money as a car salesman, nonetheless installed a Charmglow grill in the backyard in the early 1970s. Because this was the Stone Age of grilling, back when an ankle-high hibachi or a campfire was the most you could hope for, he built a concrete platform for it and bolted the grill down, weather be damned. A grill with wheels might as well have been from The Jetsons.

My dad fine-tuned his grilling expertise over the years until he finally figured out the precise combination of tenderizing marinade, spice, and heat to apply for the best results. Steak was an occasional luxury and fish hit our plate only when it hit the bait on his hook. Chicken parts always made the fire flare and my father curse. For the family of a guy selling Chevrolets and Buicks, pork was the affordableand deliciousoption while he learned how to get the most out of the family grill.

I grew up in the same city where Ray Lampe now lives. That Ray and I just so happen to live in the exact part of the world where the pig first came ashore in the Americas is no happy accident. Pork is a magnet that attracts all men.

But make no mistake: Geography has nothing to do with Rays expertise. Across this delicious nation and around the world, he has honed his skills at cook-offs, throwdowns, and smokefests at a champion level that approaches ninja status. Simply put, Ray is a global master of the pig.

In this book, you will findas I didthat there are more ways to enhance your chop-eating enjoyment than you ever thought possible. Rays sense for making pork even more delicious than it comes in its original packaging is calibrated more acutely than that of mortal cooks. In his hands you can feel secure that not only are you making the tastiest and most tender cut of the pig, youre doing so in the company of an expert.

He is, after all, a doctor of barbecue.

Jeff Houck
The Tampa Tribune

I once had a bumper sticker that read The World Is My Pork Chop. Needless to say, I made a lot of new friends because of it. Maybe Im a little over the top, but I believe we all have a love affair with pork chops. They may not be the high-end meal at great steak houses, but theyre always on the menu. And on those pricey menus, pork chops are the best value, and theyre delicious! When Mrs. Cunningham wanted to butter up Howard on the classic sitcom Happy Days, she served him pork chops. In Mayberry, Andys favorite meal from Aunt Bees kitchen was pork chops. The dish that started the on-a-stick craze at state fairs was the pork chop on a stick. I could go on.

Pork chops are just about everyones favorite cut from the beloved pig. They come from the loin area up on top of the pig. Thats the part were talking about when we refer to something good as being high on the hog. Pork chops are lean enough to be healthful, but flavorful enough to stand up to a wide variety of preparations, both in the kitchen and on the outdoor grill. And while we all love to cook and eat pork chops, weve only just scratched the surface of their culinary potential. I love pork chops grilled or breaded and fried. But I also love them on a Philly-style sandwich with cheese and onions, or with Spanish rice in a dish I call Arroz con Puerco Chops . Theyre all here for you to enjoy and all written with my own spin after forty years in the kitchen. Im known as Dr. BBQ and Im proud to wear that moniker. Grilling and smoking are a passion for me and I love to cook that way, but Ive spent a lot of time at the range as well. Even