**The Art of Pan-Roasting: A Guide to Perfecting Your Technique**

When it comes to cooking pork chops, many of us rely on quick and easy methods that result in bland and uninspired dishes. However, with a little practice and patience, anyone can master the art of pan-roasting, resulting in a juicy and flavorful piece of meat that's sure to impress. In this article, we'll take a deep dive into the technique of pan-roasting, exploring the importance of aromatics, the role of ice water in brining, and the key steps involved in achieving perfection.

**The Brine: A Flavorful Foundation**

To start, we need to create a flavorful foundation for our pork chop. This begins with a brine made from saltwater, ice, and a variety of aromatics such as spices, herbs, and citrus. By dissolving the ice in the saltwater solution, we dilute the brine and allow it to infuse the meat with flavor. The resulting brine is then used to marinate our pork chop, which will absorb all the flavors and aromas that make this dish so special.

**The Importance of Ice**

Ice plays a crucial role in the brining process, as it helps to dissolve the saltwater solution and creates an environment that's conducive to flavor absorption. By adding ice to the brine, we ensure that the meat cooks evenly and that all surfaces are exposed to the flavorful liquid. This is especially important when cooking large cuts of meat like pork chops, which can be prone to drying out if not cooked properly.

**Draining and Preparing the Meat**

Once our pork chop has been brining for eight to twelve hours, it's time to drain off excess moisture and prepare it for cooking. By placing the meat on paper towels, we absorb as much surface moisture as possible, ensuring that the skin browns evenly and crisps up nicely. The little spices we add during this step will also burn if they stick to the pork chop, so we take care to remove any excess seasoning.

**The Pan-Roasting Process**

With our meat prepared and ready for cooking, it's time to start the pan-roasting process. We heat a large skillet or pan over medium-high heat, adding a small amount of oil to prevent sticking. Once the oil is hot, we add our pork chop and cook it on the first side for three to four minutes, or until it develops a light golden brown color. Flipping the meat and cooking for another ten minutes will give us a beautiful crust on both sides.

**Searing the Fat Cap**

One of the key steps in pan-roasting is searing the fat cap, which can be prone to burning if not cooked correctly. To achieve this, we tilt the pan slightly and hold it in place to stabilize the meat. As the fat begins to render out and crisp up, we flip the pork chop again and continue cooking for another two minutes.

**Adding Flavor with Butter Basting**

To finish our dish off, we add a pat of butter to the pan, along with some aromatics like garlic and thyme. By basting the meat with this flavorful butter, we create a rich and nutty sauce that enhances the overall flavor of the pork chop. We continue to cook for another two minutes, or until the juices start to circulate evenly throughout the meat.

**Resting and Serving**

Once our pork chop is cooked to perfection, it's time to rest it for 15 minutes before serving. During this time, we'll continue to baste the meat with the remaining butter sauce, ensuring that all surfaces are evenly coated. Finally, we slice the pork chop and serve it with a sprinkle of flaky salt, garnished with fresh herbs if desired.

**The Payoff**

Pan-roasting may seem like a simple technique on the surface, but the payoff is well worth the effort. With this method, you'll achieve a juicy and flavorful piece of meat that's sure to impress even the most discerning palates. Whether you're cooking for one or a crowd, pan-roasting is an essential skill every home cook should master.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso it's basically leaving you with a moister porkchop than you at all otherwise hats why did I just say my Stickle it's disgusting okay so we're gonna do a pan-roasted brined pork chop recipe today it's threefold there's the brining process which is a really important technique to understand in order to provide a lot of flavor and seasoning for your meat and then it gets pan-roasted on the stovetop finished in the oven and the last thing that we're gonna do is baste it with butter and aromatics so for the brine we're gonna go get peppercorns juniper berries a pork chop some salt some sugar and some garlic and the thyme so here goes 1/2 a cup of sugar 1/2 a cup of salt and then 2 cups of water we're gonna bring this water to a boil and dissolve the salt and sugar here so our water is not quite to a boil yet but the salt and sugar is almost entirely dissolved so I'm going to add the aromatics now and we use a teaspoon of juniper berries 1/2 a teaspoon of black peppercorns one head of garlic that just broke into a million pieces and a few sprigs of thyme this would be an awesome just general recipe Bryan recipe that you could scale up and down for other cuts of meat works really well on lean cuts of meat that tend to dry out so we're at a boil here cut the heat off and bring it back over okay so the sugar and salt have been dissolved in the brine here you can see that they're no longer visible and we've added all of our aromatics and now we're just going to pour it into this ice water so I'm just gonna encourage the ice to dissolve the recipe is designed so that the ice dissolves and it dilutes the saltwater solution so here we have a giant double-cut pork chop bone in this is about two or two-and-a-half inches thick and there are two ribs that run through here so it's a double-cut pork chop this will feed two people maybe three it's probably just two and then I'm gonna cover this and then put in the refrigerator for eight to twelve hours okay so this has been draining for eight hours so I'm gonna drain this on paper towels just to get as much of the surface moisture off of it so that we get a good sear when it hits the pan these little spices will burn if they stick to the pork chop so I'm just making sure they're all the technique here with pan-roasting is that we're going to get good color on all sides of this pork chop and then finish it in the oven so we're not cooking it all the way through up here we're just establishing a nice crust you can see that it's shimmering and just starting to smoke so I'm going to add this to the pan we're gonna cook this on the first side for three or four minutes till it gets a light golden brown color we have some good color here so I'm going to flip it now and try and get the same color on the other side ten minutes on this side and then we're gonna try and sear this fat cap here and let some of that fat render out and get crispy okay so we're golden brown I'm going to tip it up on its fat cap here and just hold it to stabilize it the fat cap will burn more quickly than the rest of it will so just keep an eye on it okay so now that we have some good browning on the fat cap I'm going to lay it back on its original side and do two more minutes here it looks super dark this is not burnt this is the sugar so we're in the brine caramelizing so there's a lot of really good depth of flavor there so don't be afraid of it getting a little darker than you're used to so it's been about eleven minutes of stovetop cooking and I'm going to flip it one more time and then of it so here we go so just as we did on the stovetop we're gonna pull this out of the oven every two minutes and flip it so that it keeps cooking evenly and doesn't get too dark on one side and we'll do that for about twelve to fourteen more minutes the last thing that we're going to do this pork chop is add flavor through butter basting so that means adding whole butter with some more of the aromatics that we brined it with into the hot pan when it comes out of the oven and we'll use a spoon and face the pork chop with it so that the butter Browns and it gets all nutty and delicious and then we'll let it rest yeah Moe's there's a lot of fat left in this pan here and what we're going to do is tip off all of this fat and then add the whole butter that we talked about earlier all right medium heat so now we're gonna add three tablespoons of butter two cloves of garlic and a sprig of thyme the residual heat from the pan has already started melting the butter and I let it keep going smells still listen okay so here we go tipping the pan and we're just tuning this butter up and over the pork chop all those little areas that are still a little bit blond are gonna now turn brown from this brown butter and we're basically beating it in aromatic brown butter back is like a super stuffy restaurant technique that is kind of an awesome back pocket tool to have basically just always be beautiful butter always be baste it so we stop the pork drop at 135 because it will continue to cook here for another 10 degrees or so and then we'll rest it for a good 15 minutes and then play so now we'll take the top and move it to the resting mass and that will rest for 15 minutes but what's important about this is that we're gonna continue to do the flipping every couple of minutes so that as it rests the juices recirculate evenly throughout it so we're just gonna finish it with some flaky salt as it goes good with everything there you have the pan roasted and brined pork chop it's a little bit more effort in the beginning of the recipe but it's certainly worth that there's a huge payoff as someone who's not really a pork chop person this is a recipe I can certainly get behind that's my milk as I'm making cottage cheese laterso it's basically leaving you with a moister porkchop than you at all otherwise hats why did I just say my Stickle it's disgusting okay so we're gonna do a pan-roasted brined pork chop recipe today it's threefold there's the brining process which is a really important technique to understand in order to provide a lot of flavor and seasoning for your meat and then it gets pan-roasted on the stovetop finished in the oven and the last thing that we're gonna do is baste it with butter and aromatics so for the brine we're gonna go get peppercorns juniper berries a pork chop some salt some sugar and some garlic and the thyme so here goes 1/2 a cup of sugar 1/2 a cup of salt and then 2 cups of water we're gonna bring this water to a boil and dissolve the salt and sugar here so our water is not quite to a boil yet but the salt and sugar is almost entirely dissolved so I'm going to add the aromatics now and we use a teaspoon of juniper berries 1/2 a teaspoon of black peppercorns one head of garlic that just broke into a million pieces and a few sprigs of thyme this would be an awesome just general recipe Bryan recipe that you could scale up and down for other cuts of meat works really well on lean cuts of meat that tend to dry out so we're at a boil here cut the heat off and bring it back over okay so the sugar and salt have been dissolved in the brine here you can see that they're no longer visible and we've added all of our aromatics and now we're just going to pour it into this ice water so I'm just gonna encourage the ice to dissolve the recipe is designed so that the ice dissolves and it dilutes the saltwater solution so here we have a giant double-cut pork chop bone in this is about two or two-and-a-half inches thick and there are two ribs that run through here so it's a double-cut pork chop this will feed two people maybe three it's probably just two and then I'm gonna cover this and then put in the refrigerator for eight to twelve hours okay so this has been draining for eight hours so I'm gonna drain this on paper towels just to get as much of the surface moisture off of it so that we get a good sear when it hits the pan these little spices will burn if they stick to the pork chop so I'm just making sure they're all the technique here with pan-roasting is that we're going to get good color on all sides of this pork chop and then finish it in the oven so we're not cooking it all the way through up here we're just establishing a nice crust you can see that it's shimmering and just starting to smoke so I'm going to add this to the pan we're gonna cook this on the first side for three or four minutes till it gets a light golden brown color we have some good color here so I'm going to flip it now and try and get the same color on the other side ten minutes on this side and then we're gonna try and sear this fat cap here and let some of that fat render out and get crispy okay so we're golden brown I'm going to tip it up on its fat cap here and just hold it to stabilize it the fat cap will burn more quickly than the rest of it will so just keep an eye on it okay so now that we have some good browning on the fat cap I'm going to lay it back on its original side and do two more minutes here it looks super dark this is not burnt this is the sugar so we're in the brine caramelizing so there's a lot of really good depth of flavor there so don't be afraid of it getting a little darker than you're used to so it's been about eleven minutes of stovetop cooking and I'm going to flip it one more time and then of it so here we go so just as we did on the stovetop we're gonna pull this out of the oven every two minutes and flip it so that it keeps cooking evenly and doesn't get too dark on one side and we'll do that for about twelve to fourteen more minutes the last thing that we're going to do this pork chop is add flavor through butter basting so that means adding whole butter with some more of the aromatics that we brined it with into the hot pan when it comes out of the oven and we'll use a spoon and face the pork chop with it so that the butter Browns and it gets all nutty and delicious and then we'll let it rest yeah Moe's there's a lot of fat left in this pan here and what we're going to do is tip off all of this fat and then add the whole butter that we talked about earlier all right medium heat so now we're gonna add three tablespoons of butter two cloves of garlic and a sprig of thyme the residual heat from the pan has already started melting the butter and I let it keep going smells still listen okay so here we go tipping the pan and we're just tuning this butter up and over the pork chop all those little areas that are still a little bit blond are gonna now turn brown from this brown butter and we're basically beating it in aromatic brown butter back is like a super stuffy restaurant technique that is kind of an awesome back pocket tool to have basically just always be beautiful butter always be baste it so we stop the pork drop at 135 because it will continue to cook here for another 10 degrees or so and then we'll rest it for a good 15 minutes and then play so now we'll take the top and move it to the resting mass and that will rest for 15 minutes but what's important about this is that we're gonna continue to do the flipping every couple of minutes so that as it rests the juices recirculate evenly throughout it so we're just gonna finish it with some flaky salt as it goes good with everything there you have the pan roasted and brined pork chop it's a little bit more effort in the beginning of the recipe but it's certainly worth that there's a huge payoff as someone who's not really a pork chop person this is a recipe I can certainly get behind that's my milk as I'm making cottage cheese later\n"