Food Pornalicious
Pork loin chops marinated with blood orange juice, lime juice, rosemary, garlic, and chipotle puree grilled and served on a bed of smokey bulgur salad and topped with grilled asparagus. The bulgur salad is made with a medium grain bulgur, chunks of fresh charcoal-grilled sweet peppers, jalapeno peppers, tomatillos, pineapple, and fresh scallions all tossed together with a tangy lime vinaigrette.
A: mmm mmm mmm! it’s been ages since we’ve grilled! that’s a total shame, considering its always grilling weather here in san diego!
T: too bad it’s a pain in the butt to grill.
A: it’s not really a pain the butt to grill, it’s just a little more of a lengthy process since we only have a charcoal grill.
T: would you prefer to be using another type of grill?
A: not really. i prefer the smokey flavor that charcoal gives as opposed to a gas grill. so what’d you think about the bulgar salad?
T: that salad was OFF THE CHAIN. There was no chain involved with the salad. I can’t say enough about it. spicy pieces of grilled jalapeno, sweet grilled pineapple, and some extremely tasty bulgur. Mmmmm MMm.
A: 🙂 sweet! i don’t know how we ever made it through our lives with out all the grain salads we eat these days! this one was particularly nice. it had everything: sweetness from the pineapple, tartness from the lime and tomatilla, spicy jalaps, crunchy green onions, and the whole thing was smokey to boot – given that all the ingredients other than the bulgur were grilled.
T: yeah. Mmm.. I could eat that stuff all day. Several days in a row. The pork chop was extremely tasty as well. I thought it went great with the salad, too.
A: yeah. i think it was just slightly overcooked though. i prefer my pork to be closer to medium than to well-done.
T: it was still nice and juicy though. What’s your rating tonight?
A: hmmm… i’m going to have to give this meal an overall rating of 4.34/5. it was totally yummy… and much healthier than some of the things we post! not that that really means too much to me 😉
T: 😛 yeah right, you know you care. Well, i can’t understand how you didn’t give it a higher rating, considering how unreal that bulgar salad was.
A: yeah… if i were just rating the salad it probably would have gotten a 4.67/5 rather than a 4.34. the pork chop was good, but it wasn’t my best ever. i enjoyed the flavors of the chop’s marinade… i just left it on for a minute or two longer than i should have.
T: I agree that the marinade was super-awesome, but that the chop wasn’t the best that it could have been. I would give the chop a 4.4/5. I would give the marinade a 4.69/5. I would give the bulgur salad a 4.83/5.
A: wowsers, T! that sure is a mighty high rating! 4.83!
T: wowsers, A, that salad ROCKED.
A: 😀 well… do you have an overall meal rating? or are you going to make me average those three in my head to figure it out!
T: you’re going to have to figure it out in your head I suppose. I mean, we could use a calculator. Personally I don’t remember long division so those are really the only options as I see it.
A: oh, well, we could just guesstimate..i guesstimate you average is….some where around 4.6…3ish….
T: wrong. while you were guestimating I decided my overall rating was a 4.7/5.
A: damn it!
2-4 pork chops (depending on how many people you're serving)
juice and zest from 1 blood orange
juice from 1/2 lime
1/8 cup pureed chipotle in adobo
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1/8 cup olive oil
kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper
In a mixing bowl, whisk together the orange juice and zest, lime juice, chipotle puree, honey, and rosemary. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil while whisking continuously to form an emulsified marinade. Place the pork chops in an appropriately sized sealable plastic bag and pour the marinade over the chops. Seal the bag and place the bag on a plate. Allow the chops to marinate, refrigerated, for at least 2 hours, but optimally overnight. Half an hour before grilling, remove the chops from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature. Season both sides of the chops liberally with kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Grill over medium high heat for two minutes, then rotate the chops a quarter-turn and grill for another three minutes, this will give you lovely grill marks. Repeat the process on the other side of the chops, grilling for two minutes then rotating a quarter-turn and grilling for another two minutes. Cook time may vary depending on the width of your chops. Remove the chops from the grill and allow them to rest for a few minutes before serving so the juices have time to reabsorb into the meat. Great served with grilled asparagus and bulgur salad. Enjoy!
1 cup bulgur wheat
1 2/3 cup boiling water
1 ring fresh pineapple, about 1/2 inch thick (or equivalent if you don't have a full ring)
3 small sweet peppers, (red, yellow, or orange)
1 large or 2 small tomatillos, husked and cut in half
1 large jalapeno
1 scallion, thinly sliced
olive oil
kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper
for vinaigrette:
juice and zest from 1 lime
1 tsp honey
1 tsp dijon mustard
1/8 cup canola oil
Make the vinaigrette. In a bowl, whisk together the lime juice, zest, honey, and dijon mustard. Slowly drizzle in the canola oil, whisking constantly, to form an emulsified vinaigrette. This is a tart vinaigrette, if you don't like this much acid simply pour less of the vinaigrette over the salad and just add an extra drizzle of olive oil. Chances are you won't need all the vinaigrette as it is.
In a small sauce pan, bring 1 2/3 cup of water to a boil. Stir in the bulgur wheat and a pinch of salt. Cover and reduce heat to low. Allow the bulgur to simmer for about 20 minutes until all of the water is absorbed or until the bulgur is a nice tender consistency. Squeeze out excess moisture from the bulgur and add the bulgur to a medium-sized mixing bowl. Pour half of the vinaigrette over the bulgur and toss to coat. Set aside until veggies are done.
While the bulgur is simmering, prepare veggies for grilling. Place the pineapple, sweet peppers, tomatillos, and jalapeno on a platter. Drizzle the fruits and veggies with olive oil and season liberally with kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Grill over medium high heat for about 5-7 minutes, flipping half way through cooking. The tomatillos will take slightly less time to grill - you still want them to be firm and not get all mushy. Remove the veggies from the grill and dice them up into bite-sized pieces. If you don't like heat, you can remove the seeds from the jalapeno when dicing.
Add the diced grilled veggies to the mixing bowl with the bulgur. Stir the veggies in and add as much more of the vinaigrette as it takes to make a nicely lubed salad, just watch out... you don't want the grains swimming in vinaigrette! Taste the salad and season as necessary with kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. Serve warm or chilled. Enjoy!
That sounds much better than what I made last night. Pork and root vegetable stew. Has about 5# of roasted prok butt scraps in the freezer to use up, and got a free bunch of chiogga beets, and a left over half head of cabbage, and plenty of citrus a friend gave us, and some turnips and carrots i picked up at the market last week, and finally made the stew. It was good but not as good as your grill festival sounds!!!!
I added some pork butt also to mellow ou tthe prok butt, and its expensive until another prok probe crashes in the near by cane fields.
“eat that stuff several days in a row”?!!!! my goooosh! hahaha That is WONDERFUL (: I tried Mac and Cheese! I followed a bit of our recipe because I didn’t have all the ingredients. It’s hard to get it here. It was GREAT! My little brother loves it!
Oh yum!!! I am always looking for new ways to serve pork – – the Brady Bunch messed us all up with “Pork Chops and Applesauce.”
I am so making that salad this week, I can’t wait!
I knew I smelled pork. You know how I feel about this one…this is a keeper.
Man I miss pork…and I LOVED pork chops and applesauce. It was actually the only way I ate applesauce. This looks yummy…even the bulgar salad!
That’s damn dirty food porn!
I haven’t had bulgur wheat in years. My ex used to love the stuff so I’d get fed bulgur salad when I visited him. But I just never got round to buying it for myself. I think i should go find some.
That marinade sounds totally delicious! Mmmm… citrus and pork!
I’ve never had pork chops and applesauce… but it doesn’t sound too bad.
You guys are driving me crazy with all these grain salads! This one sounds sooooo yummy! I haven’t seen any tomatillos here but I’ll be trying some variation of this when I can get my hands on some bulgur wheat!
I’ve added you to my blogroll!
How inspirational! I bought a grain cookbook several years ago but it’s been collecting dust recently. I’m gonna have to dust it off, put it back into rotation, and tuck your recipe into it. Yum!
hark, that porkchop! wow, i’m making porkchops tonight but they will be nowhere as fanshy as this. beautiful pictures too, specially how the asparus lay feverishly wilting….sigh…
First things first, i just wanna say i’m sorry for not keeping up with the comments lately! i went out of town to deal with family issues and have been swamped with stuff ever since! thanks everybody for dropping by and talking to us. we love to hear from all of you!
heheh bobby, you crack me up. was it all pork butt scraps from harvest? you could always mail me some (with some dry ice!) and i’ll use it right up! hmm i can imagine the pork buttalicious flavor of pork butt seasoned with pork butt and cut with pork butt just to give it the right pork buttiness.
denise! i’m so glad you and your brother enjoyed the mac and cheese! once you make mac and cheese from a bechamel there really is no going back! and you can use it as a basis to make a gazilllion different varieties of the dish. the skies the limit… seriously! 🙂
kat, while i love some apples and pork together there are definitely so many other ways to make pork awesome! shoot. pork needs no help making it awesome! it just is 🙂
marianne, grain salads are so addictive! if i didn’t think tyler would get sick of them i would fix them everyday:-)
thanks vanessa! i agree with you. if it’s pork, it’s good!…. unless, of course the poor piece of meat has been over-cooked and dried out! (which is exactly how my mom would make it!) i’ve been drooling over all of your braised meats lately. why i oughta….
michelle, i can understand. pork would definitely be one of those things that i would day dream about if i ever went crazy and gave up meat. 😛 mmm bacon. it seems i already day dream about pork!
thanks ros! i don’t know what it is about me and grain salads lately (meaning over the past few years) but i just can’t seem to get enough of them! and yeah, pork + citrus always = yummy!
thanks nicole! really any variation of ingredients work. it’s really all about the sweet and sour lime vinaigrette for me. lemon and lime vinaigrettes make me go weak in the knees. 🙂 i know you can get some crazy good citrus over there!
thanks steen! ooo! a whole cookbook with nothing but grain recipes! heavenly!
aria! that is exactly the food porniness of it… oooo! i love the word feverishly.. and wilting… together! it’s getting hot in here!