Pork chops with fall vegetables and apple pie filling

Its fall here so I made some classic fall flavors. This is a great bone in pork chop with roasted butternut squash and beets, dressed with a pan gravy and served with a side of apple pie filling.

The Chop

This is a very basic pork chop in all actuality. The beauty is how simple ingredients, cooked right turn out great.

• so to start this off you want to brine this in a plastic bag with water, salt, pepper, and some garlic. This is not needed, but it lends to a juicier chop. Just do it up with whatever flavors you hitch your wagon to and put it in the fridge for an hour.

• in the meantime, do the veggies. This is pretty simple as well. Just peel, and cube them. Lay em on a baking tray with some salt and oil and put them in an oven until tender (around 30 mins)

• take em out, set em aside and put an oven safe pan in the oven for preheating.

• take the chops out to pat them dry. Dress with salt and pepper on both sides. Turn a burner on to high in prep for the pan

• take the pan out of the oven and place on the heated burner. Put some olive oil in the pan

• once the oil starts shimmering, put the chops in and leave them be for around 3 minutes. Flip them and then put them back into the oven.

• after about 7 minutes check temperatures of the chops. They should be around 140 F internal temp.

• remove from the oven, take the chops out and let them rest. SAVE THE PAN. We can make an easy pan sauce with the caramelized bits like the gravy from last weeks meatballs.

• to do this, just melt some butter, toss in some flour and some stock and that's all

Apple Pie Filling

Ingredients

• 3lbs of apples
• juice of about 2 lemons
• 5 cups of water
• 3.5-4 cups of sugar depending on tastes (I did less as I was not working with a tart apple)
• 1 cup of cornstarch
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp salt

Steps

• put the lemon juice in a large bowl. Core and thinly slice the apples and to the bowl. Toss the bowl every few minutes to distribute the lemon juice. This keeps the apples from browning

• add the other ingredients to a large stock pot and boil while mixing for a few minutes. The longer you do this, the thicker the goop.

• add in the apples and stir.

• Cover simmer until the desired texture is reached. Mine was around 10 minutes. Let cool and it with thicken up nicely.

I endorse all these recipes and if I were to do anything differently, I would have hit the chop with more salt and pepper. Its hard to overdo that. In total it was all delicious and if I have to make a favorite, the apple pie filling takes the cake. I honestly can't recommend it enough.