Another Sunday Dinner

Well this Sunday we had a little something different. It was just Big E and I. We spent the afternoon tuning up our bowling game (a different blog for a different day) and picking up some groceries.

Since it was just the two of us, she decided to grab some boneless pork chops. Normally, pork is smoked and takes hours to complete but we decided to grab some pork that could easily be grilled on the gas grill.

For seasoning, we tried the pork rub and BBQ sauce sold as part of the Nick and Terry Saban "Nicks Kids Fund" charity. You can find their website here ... http://www.nickskidsfund.com/.

Before going any further, I prefer to make my own rub! I've never tried to make my own BBQ sauce but it is on my to do list for this summer. I can't speak to the goodness of the individual rub or sauce, but combined they are awesome. Whether you are fan a Nick Saban or Alabama Football fan, the value is definitely there and a portion of the proceeds go to benefit a very worthwhile charity.

The chops were approximately 1 inch thick; coated liberally with rub and allowed to rest on the counter (covered of course) for about an hour to insure that the meat is room temperature before hitting the grill. Don't underestimate the value of allowing meat to come up to room temperature before going to the grill.

Since I didn't want to scorch the pork chops, I only had the heat going on two of the three burners. This allowed me to have a HOT side, a medium middle and a warm side of the grill.

I placed the pork chops on the warm side of the grill and placed some left over buns coated with butter on the Hot side of the grill. The buns only stayed on the grill long enough to warm up and melt the butter (trust me, 1 minute per side some enough). We used the buns as an appetizer.

HINT: use your favorite BBQ sauce as a dipping sauce for bread! Heat the sauce until its runny (if it isn't already) and dip your bread. This works best with spicier sauces as opposed to sweet sauces. Thanks to Dreamland BBQ for this little idea.

While the chops were slowly coming up to speed, Big E made some garlic mashed potatoes to have with the chops. After 5-6 minutes I flipped the chops and let them go another 4-5 minutes simply trying to get them up to temp.

Then I took a spoon full of the BBQ sauce and coated one side of the chops with it. I placed the sauced side down on the Hot side of the grill to caramelize the sauce to the chop and repeated on the other side. All told, I only left the chops on the Hot heat for 1-2 minutes per side.

The end result was juice dripping, extremely tasty pork chop with some really nice potatoes. We kicked back and watched the ACM awards. That was a good night for the two of us.