Sous Vide Pork Chops - Cheap and Easy

Iowa is famous for having more pigs than people, and so pork is amazingly affordable year round. Our local grocery store routinely sells thick cut, bone-in pork chops for about $2 each. But pork, like chicken, is easy to overcook and dry out. Using sous vide, you can get consistent, delicious results every time. I recently made the chops you see in the picture, and the entire meal cost about $20 for our family of 7.

The technique for cooking pork chops is the same regardless of whether they are bone-in or boneless. If you are cooking anything larger than about 1.5 inches thick, you'll want to increase the cook time to about 2 hours, but below that an hour or so will do. You can trim the chops as lean as you like, but cooking them in the sous vide will turn the fat so soft and delicious that you can leave it on. The final sear gives you a chance to crisp it up if desired.

About an hour and a half before dinner time, get your cooking pot full of hot water, and set your sous vide device for 145 degrees. While that's coming up to temp, prepare the chops by drying them and then seasoning with salt, pepper, garlic powder, or your favorite pork rub. You can add fresh rosemary or other herbs if you like. Do not use a liquid marinade, however.

Put two chops in a gallon freezer bag, with a space between them. Once the water bath is up to temperature, slowly immerse each bag into the water, using a wooden spoon to help push it down into the water. The air will be forced out of the bag, and once the water is up to the bottom of the seal, press and lock the bag completely. I use a small upright rack to hold the food vertically to ensure that the water completely surrounds the meat. Some people just use a paper binder clip to attach them to the side of the cooking vessel, and that seems to work too. You just don't want the bags floating on the top of the water, the food should be completely immersed.

Leave the pork in the pot like this for an hour to an hour and a half (2 hours if the meat is thicker than 1.5 inches). This is a good time to have a cocktail and make any side dishes- with pork chops, I like to make this dead-easy copycat recipe of Famous Dave's Drunken Apples. You see them peeking over the top of the chop in the picture. I made some couscous for our dinner as well.

When the time is up, the last step is to sear the chops in a hot skillet to get some color and extra flavor. Take the bags out of the water bath and remove the chops with tongs to a paper towel lined plate. Dry all of the chops completely on all sides.

I used some olive oil in a 12 inch skillet set over high heat. I could fit three chops into the skillet at a time, so once the olive oil was just smoking I seared the chops for about 45 seconds to a minute, flipped, and seared for another minute. When I flipped them, I added a chunk of butter to the pan, and basted the chops with it. This is the time to sear that exterior fat if you want. Remove immediately and plate. Repeat with the other batch of chops. This part goes really fast, so I have my kids stand next to the stove and I remove the chops and plate them for each person directly, and they get their side dishes at the same time. Less serving dishes to wash up!

My kids went from not liking pork chops to loving them. If you can plan ahead and start the water bath going, the actual active time is only about 10 minutes. For the price (at least where I live), you can't beat it.

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