This site is about that perennial dinner favorite, the pork chops. Why take the time and trouble to build a whole site about a mundane food like pork chops, you may ask? Well for one thing I think the dish deserves more respect. This is a piece of meat that can be served, cooked and prepared in so many ways it's not even funny. Sure, you can fry them up with salt and pepper and serve them up like that, but if that's the only way you eat porkchops you're missing out on a lot!
What is a pork chop anyway? The definition is "a cut of meat perpendicularly cut to the spine of the pig and usually containing a rib or part of a vertebra, served as an individual portion". It's similar in structure to the beef t-bone steak in that the center cut, or pork loin chop, includes a large T-shaped bone. You can have either blade or shoulder chops (cut from the shoulder portion of the pork loin) or rib chops (cut from the rib end). The finest cut is usually called the sirloin chop which is taken from the end of the rear leg of the pig, and contains the most meat. Other not so common cuts that you may find for sale are Iowa chops (a thick center cut) or bacon chops (cut from the shoulder and leaving pork belly meat still attached). In addition you have boneless pork chops, where the bone has been cut off to leave just the meat.
The different cuts may be of interest to the butcher, but for the dinner guest it's more likely to be of less importance. Preparation, cooking and seasoning is what really matters. Did you know that there are hundreds of ways to cook pork chops? We've put together information on different recipes including oven baked pork chops, how to cook them, marinades, broiled chops, boneless or butterfly pork chops and so much more.
