Cast Iron Pork Chops, Sherry Pan Sauce, Balsamic-Lacquered Peaches

Bone-in chops brought up slow and seared hard in cast iron. A savoury pan sauce off the fond and sherry. Peaches lacquered with balsamic in the same pan, and a handful of raw arugula against it all.

Why You'll Love Cast Iron Pork Chops, Sherry Pan Sauce, Balsamic-Lacquered Peaches

This is a late-August plate built on a peach worth eating raw. It gets cooked anyway, because thirty seconds of balsamic on a hot cut face gives perfect fruit an edge. The pork is the reason to heat the pan. Standing the chops on their fat caps first renders the edge crisp and leaves you cooking everything else in pork fat, which is the difference between a chop with a soft rim nobody eats and one where the best bite is the outside. The sauce takes eight minutes, comes entirely out of what the chops left behind, and stays savoury on purpose so the sweetness on the plate is the fruit's own. One pan, one oven, nothing fussy. Salt, heat, and putting the good things on last.

Tips and Tricks

• Buy unsalted stock, not low sodium. The cooking wine brings close to a teaspoon of salt with it and salt does not cook off, so the volume of wine you pour is a seasoning decision made at the shop.
• Ask for freestone peaches and test one at the stand. If the pit twists free clean, it will halve clean. A clingstone tears and you lose the flat face.
• The slow oven is what keeps the pink running to the edge. A chop this thick seared from cold gives you a grey band under the crust every time.
• Pull the pork at 140 degrees and rest it. Everyone who thinks they dislike pork chops has been eating them cooked to 160.
• The peaches go last, during the rest. A peach that has been sitting on a plate for twenty minutes is a cold peach.

Variations

• Cook it outside. Two zones on a grill, chops on the unlit side to 125 degrees, then sear over the fire, with the skillet on a side burner for the cap and the sauce.
• Swap the peaches for nectarines, pluots or firm plums as the peach window closes.
• Add a split rosemary sprig alongside the thyme for a more resinous, piney sauce.

Substitutions

• Bone-in pork rib chop becomes a bone-in veal chop or a thick-cut loin chop. Loin is much leaner, so pull it 5 degrees earlier.
• Wild arugula becomes regular arugula, watercress, or torn escarole. Anything raw with a bitter edge. Not a soft herb, which will not stand up to the sauce.
• Unsalted chicken stock becomes water. Genuinely fine here, because the fond and the rendered fat are carrying the flavour and water at least brings no salt of its own.

Best Served With

• Grilled bread rubbed with a cut clove of garlic, for the sauce.
• Corn, blistered in the pork fat while the chops rest.
• A glass of dry Amontillado, or a chilled young Grenache.

How to Store Leftovers

Store the pork and the sauce in separate airtight containers in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Reheat the pork gently, covered, in a 225 degree oven so it does not tighten. Warm the sauce over low heat and whisk in one small cube of cold butter to bring the emulsion back. Peaches are best the day they are made, and dressed arugula does not keep at all. The poured-off pork fat keeps covered in the fridge for a month.

Common Questions

Cast Iron Pork Chops, Sherry Pan Sauce, Balsamic-Lacquered Peaches

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Bone-in pork chops, dry-brined, brought up in a slow oven and seared hard in cast iron. A savoury pan sauce built off the fond with sherry cooking wine. Peaches lacquered with balsamic glaze in the same pan, and dressed arugula alongside.

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 45 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr

Servings: 2

Course: Entree, Meat

Cuisine: American, Californian

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

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Pork

• 2 bone-in pork rib chops 12 to 14 oz each, 1 ½ inches thick, fat cap left on
• 2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper freshly cracked

Sherry Pan Sauce

• 1 large shallot thinly sliced
• 2 sprigs fresh thyme
• ¾ cup Roland Sherry Cooking Wine
• 1 cup unsalted chicken stock
• 4 tablespoon unsalted butter cold, cubed

Peaches

• 2 freestone peaches ripe, halved and pitted
• 1 tablespoon Roland Balsamic Glaze

Arugula

• 3 cups wild arugula loosely packed
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

To Finish

• flaky salt to taste

Method

 

Salt the Chops

1. Pat the chops dry, then salt them on both faces and along the fat cap. Dry first, because water on the surface dilutes the brine and lets it run off onto the rack instead of getting drawn back in.
2. Rack over a sheet pan, uncovered, in the fridge. Four hours is a real floor, not a soft one. Somewhere between one and three hours the surface is wet with brine that has not been taken back in yet, which is the worst possible moment to cook it. Overnight is better. The surface should go matte and slightly tacky, and that dryness is what browns later.

Bring the Pork Up Slowly

1. Oven to 250°F. Pepper the chops now. Black pepper loses its smell sitting in dry fridge air for a day, so grind it here and you can smell it from the board.
2. Chops on a rack over a sheet pan, into the oven. You are not cooking them, you are walking the whole interior up together so the sear has almost nothing left to do. That is what keeps the pink running to the edge instead of leaving a grey band under the crust.
3. Start checking at twenty five minutes. Out at 125°F in the thickest part, away from the bone.

Render the Cap and Sear

1. Cast iron over medium-high while the chops finish. No oil. The chops bring their own.
2. Stand the chops on their fat caps, leaning them against each other so they hold. This is the step the whole dish is built on. The cap renders straight down into the pan, so you finish it with a crisp edge instead of a soft one, and the pan finishes it with the fat you are about to cook everything else in. Two to three minutes, until the cap is deep gold and the pan has a shallow slick in it.
3. Lay them flat. Leave the first side alone until it releases on its own, about thirty seconds. If it sticks, the crust is not ready, so do not force it.
4. Once it lets go, keep turning them, every twenty or thirty seconds, for about ninety seconds total. They are already at temperature, so this is a crust and not a cook, and turning this often stops either face building a steep gradient while the other one waits. The crust comes out the same as leaving them alone, as long as the surface is dry, and the dry brine handled that yesterday.
5. Pull at 138 to 140°F. Rest on a rimmed board about ten minutes, until the juices stop moving. Whatever pools there goes into the sauce at the end. Carry-over takes it to 145 and the rest does the rest of the work. Trust it.
6. Pour off all but about two tablespoons of the fat. Keep it, it is the best thing in your fridge this week.

Build the Pan Sauce

1. Everything stuck to the bottom of that pan is the sauce. Shallot into the pork fat over medium. You are not browning it, just taking the raw edge off. Thyme in.
2. Sherry cooking wine in, and scrape. This is where the wine earns its place: alcohol dissolves aroma that water leaves stuck to the metal, so the pan gives up everything it has been holding.
3. Reduce until it is syrupy and still visibly wet, two or three tablespoons, and the sharp alcohol smell has gone. Stop there. Water is the only thing keeping this pan at boiling temperature, and the second it is gone the sugar and the salt in that wine are sitting on hot iron.
4. Chicken stock in. Reduce to about two thirds of a cup and no further. This wine came salted and salt does not evaporate, so how far you take it is how salty it lands.
5. Fish the thyme out. Cold butter off the heat, one cube at a time. You are building an emulsion and it wants to be warm, not hot and not cool. Glossy, coating a spoon without running. That is the line.
6. The juices from the resting board go in last. Then taste. Too salty means a splash of hot water and one more cube of butter, and that is the only fix you get once the butter is in. It will almost never need salt.
7. Into a warmed jug. It will hold the five minutes the peaches need.

Lacquer the Peaches

1. Peaches go last, in the same pan, while the meat is still resting. They need three minutes and no rest of their own, so cooking them earlier only means serving them cold.
2. Twist the pit out. If it does not come free clean, that peach is not ready to be halved and you want a different one.
3. Wipe the pan, a film of the reserved pork fat, medium-high. Peaches cut side down. A flat pan puts the whole cut face on the heat at once, which is why this works on fruit soft enough to be worth eating. Do not move them.
4. Two to three minutes, until the cut face is deeply marked and smells like it is caramelizing rather than cooking.
5. Pan off the heat. Brush the balsamic glaze over the cut faces and leave them thirty seconds. The glaze is already a syrup and mostly sugar, so on live heat it scorches and turns bitter, but on the pan's falling heat it tightens onto the fruit and stops being a sauce sitting on a peach.

Dress the Arugula

1. Last thing, after the peaches are off. Olive oil and a pinch of salt, tossed with your hands. Dressed leaves start collapsing the moment they are wet, so this cannot be done ahead the way a tomato can.
2. Taste one leaf. You want it slick, not wet. There is no lemon in it on purpose, because the sauce and the glaze are already carrying the acid on this plate. What the leaves are here for is pepper and a little bitterness against all that fat.

To Plate

1. Chops onto a board, whole, on the bone.
2. Peaches alongside, cut side up.
3. Arugula in a loose pile alongside, or in its own bowl. Flaky salt.
4. Sauce in the jug. Everyone helps themselves.

Notes

For seasoning, I always use Diamond Crystal kosher salt. If you use Morton, use half.

The dry brine is inactive time and is not counted in prep or cook.

Roland Sherry Cooking Wine is salted, 180mg of sodium per 2 tablespoons, so ¾ cup carries a little under a teaspoon of kosher salt into the pan. Salt does not evaporate, so how far the sauce is reduced sets how salty it lands. Use unsalted stock rather than low sodium and expect the sauce to need no salt at all.

A freestone peach halves cleanly and a clingstone does not. If the pit does not twist free, choose another peach.

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