13 cooking tips and tricks for making the juiciest, tastiest pork chops

Today ^ | June 1, 2018 | Megan O. Steintrager

[2ndDivisionVet]

If you've ever tried (and failed) to cook the juiciest, best tasting pork chops, the first thing you need to do is give up any notions you might have about pork being "the other white meat," as it was marketed in the fat-phobic 1980s.

"To me, a lean pork chop is the saddest possible thing," Samin Nosrat, cooking teacher and author of the James Beard Award-winning cookbook "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking," told TODAY Food.

"The challenge of those tender cuts [like pork chops] is retaining that tenderness after you cook them," Nosrat explained. "In order to do that, you want you want to set yourself up for success, and the first thing to do is to buy the least lean chops that you can find."

Nosrat shared 12 must-do tips (and the one thing you should never do!) for picking and cooking the best pork chops that you'll want to keep making — and eating — again and again....

[Texas Fossil]

Feral hogs? Yes, sir. Have processed many of them. They are a plague here, but the are lean, and if you get young ones very tender.

We’ve made lots or sausage with them.

Hogs are disease prone in captivity. If they are wild (aka free ranging) they have few problems.

We have a meat processing building at the farm. Have full complement of commercial meat processing equipment and walk in box. We do not do it commercially, but many of our hunting friends have used it, it is always a community project.

TF