Secret Recipe Club - Molasses Coffee Marinated Pork Chops

For this month’s Secret Recipe Club, I was assigned Julie’s Little Bit of Everything blog. I enjoyed perusing her blog because we have a lot in common:  50-something Midwesterners who love to cook (and collect cook books), enjoy traveling, gardening, and spending time with our hubbys. And, Julie lives in Omaha, where I lived for many years.

A number of things jumped out at me (peach caprese salad, but December is not the time for fresh peaches in St. Louis), baked acorn squash with apple filling, and lots of sweets that Craig would have loved (but not our Weight Watchers point counting), including mint filled brownie cupcakes and spicy chocolate pots de creme. I have noticed a number of bloggers, Julie included, have a “My 50”, a culinary bucket list of things they intend to make and proceed to then cross them off. I was inspired to join in the fun and challenge myself, which resulted in me making Julia Child’s pate a choux with crème patissiere for a New Year’s Eve party. Now I need to come up with my other 49 things!
I digress. I settled on her molasses coffee marinated pork chops. Since I rarely make pork chops, and I’m not sure why I don’t since these were a big hit, pretty healthy, quick aside from marinating, and very easy. From an Alton Brown recipe, the glaze on the grilled chops is rich and thickens nicely as it cooks down. Thanks, Julie, for sharing!

I made the recipe with only one change. St. Louis is enough of a “Southern” town that I always have local sorghum in the pantry, and I substituted it for the molasses. When he was home from New York over Christmas, Connor shared that his classmates at the CIA didn’t know what sorghum is, and if you don’t know either, you should. People think of it as synonymous with molasses, but not true. Sorghum is the syrup produced when the extracted juice from the sorghum is boiled down, whereas molasses is a leftover, by-product of the sugar industry. Sorghum is highly nutritional and contains iron, calcium, and potassium. It has uses beyond baked in ginger snap cookies or as a topping for buttermilk pancakes, and it is a tangy/sweet addition in savory dishes like these pork chops, stir-frys, and tremendous in baked beans. Seek it out, and as always, local is best.

Molasses Coffee Marinated Pork Chops
Serves 4

1 cup cool strong coffee
6 ounces sorghum, by weight
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
6 to 8 sprigs fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 (6 to 8-ounce) bone-in, 1-inch thick pork chops

Place all of the ingredients into a 1-gallon zip top bag, seal, and shake to combine. Place in the refrigerator to marinate for at least 2 hours or up to overnight.
Preheat grill to medium-high.

Remove the pork chops from the marinade.

Transfer the marinade to a small saucepan and place over high heat. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-high, and boil gently, stirring often, until reduced to about 1/2 cup liquid, 12 to 15 minutes. Remove the thyme stems after the glaze has reduced.

Meanwhile, grill pork chops 3 to 4 minutes per side or until they reach an internal temperature of 145 degrees F. Allow the pork chops to rest 4 to 5 minutes before serving with the glaze.


18 comments:

  1. Hi Denise,
    These chops are awesome, I can almost taste them. Great recipe for the SRC and thanks for sharing.
    Miz Helen

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    1. Thanks for stopping by, Miz Helen. These were really tasty.

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  2. Im always looking for new pork chop recipes - this marinade sounds great!

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  3. Danielle, the marinade is easy, sweet/savory, and pretty healthy. Thanks for commenting.

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  4. Oh. My. Gosh. those look delicious. Like, I was planning on having pork chops this week and now want to do this recipe. Yum!! Excellent choice!

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    1. Shelley, these are terrific, highly recommend next time you have pork chops. Enjoy, and thanks for taking a peak.

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  5. Oh, sounds really tasty. And thanks for the lesson on sorghum--I had no idea. Learn something new every day. :)

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    1. Colleen, thanks for stopping by. And, yes, even when we *think* we know a lot, still sooooooo much to learn culinary! Keeps it exciting.

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  6. LOVE this recipe - coffee in a rub is one of my very favorite!!!! This looks and sounds wonderful. Great choice. BTW, I had YOUR blog for my SRC assignment this month and it is/was CRAZY good! We have all gone bonkers over it. I've got to make another batch already. :D

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    1. Suzanne, thank you for stopping by. For some unbeknownst reason, Gmail has been dumping comments into my spam folder, so I do apologize the delay in getting this out there. Thanks, too, for the compliments on my blog. Always a work in progress.

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  7. Hello! Thank you for the nice shout out for this month's SRC! Fun to see we have a lot in common. Nice to meet you, I will be following you now! A former Omaha resident, too! It's not my home, I've only lived there 7 years, a KC native.

    Glad you enjoyed the recipe!

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    1. Julie, thanks for the comment. We moved from Omaha 16 years ago to St. Louis, all good Midwestern cities!

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  8. Another great post and recipe to try! I LOVE that you subbed in local sourghum and gave your readers some background on this terrific syrup and the encouragement to think locally. I personally would take it further and use locally roasted coffee from "the Lou" area (there are so many great ones to choose from!), also Sandhill Farms mustard and Todd Geisert's pork :)

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    1. Elizabeth, a great idea to give shout-outs to the wonderful local java and pork available in the Lou. We get half a pig from Hinkebein Hills Farm in Cape Girardeau.

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  9. Great looking pork chops! The flavoring sounds wonderful. We eat lots of pork, but rarely pork chops. Weird. I confess I've never used sorghum - clearly I've been missing out. I'll have to check my local markets to see what they have. Good stuff - thanks.

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    1. Connor is the one who got me into sorghum. One of the local Lou restaurants he worked used it in a shrimp dish if I recall, and he went crazy for it. We've been eating more chops lately because Craig loves them. Good stuff. Thanks for taking a look.

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  10. I’m surely coming again to read these articles and blogs
    vegetarian recipes

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