I am celebrating the new year by counting down my top five blogs from 2012.  You knew at some point I would get a recipe in there somewhere.  This one is a pork chop recipe from November that I particularly liked.  It was originally titled LIP SMACKING BUTTERMILK GRAVY PORK CHOPS!  Tomorrow I will post the #1, and who knows, it just might be a food blog as well?

This past Saturday was the first weekend I didn’t have a “churchy” thing on Saturday to go to in over a month.  I decided to celebrate by cooking a delicious Saturday evening dinner.  I had on hand beautiful pork chops I cut myself from a slab of meat I got at Costco.  The chops were about an inch thick.  Since I had the time (plus, we moved back an hour Saturday) I decided to snoop around for a recipe.  I found this one and it looked interesting.

I had been planning for a couple of days to cook these chops, so I brined them in advance.  I want to put a word in for that, because when pork is brined, it is so much juicier and tastier.

This particular recipe calls for a seasoned flour coat on the chops, then brown them in a skillet.  The original recipe calls for browning them in olive oil, but I’ve never had a good result with olive oil and gravy, so I used Crisco shortening instead.  After it melted and the pan got hot, I threw the chops in, browned them on both sides, and then pulled them out.  I worked up the rest of the flour into the fat, added chicken stock and reduced.  Then I added the ingredient that drew me to this recipe–buttermilk.  Never in my life have I made gravy with buttermilk.  But I did Saturday night.

Then I added the chops back into the skillet, covered, and let simmer for about 10 minutes to make sure they were cooked thoroughly.  I served them with, yep, you guessed it, buttermilk biscuits, a giant baked potato, and boiled broccoli.  It was delicious and I will definitely file this recipe under C for cook again.