Today I tested Alton Brown's molasses coffee marinated pork chops. It has been a hectic week and I was overjoyed Monday night while watching Good Eats because, not only did I have a fresh bottle of molasses in the cupboard, I had bought eight pork chops at the store that morning! Alright! Another Good Eats recipe to try.
As usual, I had to modify the recipe to fit my needs. I had all of the ingredients, but had to guesstimate the amount of molasses since Alton decided to nerd it up and specify the molasses by weight. AB bashes unitaskers, but then wants us to break out a scale just to measure a liquid! (One of these days I'll cave in and buy one) The only other thing I changed was the cooking method; the grill is still buried in a snow drift so it was cast iron cooking today.
Everything was mixed in the bag, four chops loaded, and into the fridge for 12 hours. Cast iron preheated and chops in, marinade into a saucepan to make the glaze. Then disaster struck. My arch nemesis, the electric stove, caught me off guard once again. The marinade had come to a boil and was simmering nicely while I attended to the pork chops (and constantly reassuring my 9 month old that daddy was indeed paying attention to her) when the stove decided to spike the heat and cause a boil over! I saw it almost in time, grabbed the pan, but it was too late. The marinade foamed over and onto the burner and sloshed around over my only two free burners. In my disgust I dumped the pan into the sink. The only glaze I have is the crude which will need to be removed from the stove with a razor tomorrow. There was an advantage to having cooked the chops in a cast iron skillet: a nice glaze already coated the cooked chops. **If you caught Monday night's Good Eats; Pantry Raid X, you'll understand my reasons for including the article at the top :-)
So, how did it taste? The marinade didn't add a whole lot of flavor, but the little bit of glaze I did have definitely added both a sweetness and a bit of smokiness. Next time, aside from not ruining the glaze, I'll add a bit more molasses, stronger coffee (or chicory) and maybe some more pepper or ginger to boost it a little since I still ended up with BBQ sauce for dipping.
Next projects: Good Eats ginger ale, possibly followed by some shoo-fly pie.
2 comments:
Buy. The damn. Scale.
If there's a recipe he puts out that calls for the use of weighed ingredients, there's good reason to do so. It's an essential piece of equipment, especially considering that volumetric measurements are so inconsistent.
Is that in your 'daddy' voice Will? :-)
Actually, I did buy a scale Thursday. Ginger Ale was a good excuse since I needed 6 oz of sugar. Hopefully it will taste alright when i crack it open tonight.
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