Everything Goes Better with Bacon (even pork chops!)

Please, please believe me: Bacon is not a staple of our diet. Truly. When I went food shopping last week, I chose recipes that consisted of similar ingredients just to save money. Period. While bacon on pork chops might seem like oink overload, fat is fat, and a garnish is a garnish, even if it's bacon.

Here's an almost step-by-step pictorial of the thing I made last night (at like 10 PM)

First you make the roux/sauce.

I fried 1/4" pieces of bacon in this here pot until the bacon was crisp. I removed the bacon and then used the fat as the base for this here apple cider sauce. I mean, is there really a difference between using butter or bacon in a roux? No. It's all animal fat, and we all know that pork is The Other White Meat, so, yeah. I'm thinking the bacon fat is healthier than butter. At least that's what I tell myself. Oh, and those little floaties in the picture? They're some pieces of bacon I was too lazy to couldn't scoop out with the bamboo strainer doo dad.

Hokay, I finished with that floaty stuff and moved to the other pork. Here are bone-in pork chops frying in waaaaaaay too much oil. Problem is, my apt floor isn't nearly level and a tablespoon of oil hangs out in the corner of the pan. I can't shim the back of the stove to make it level, so I compensate by drowning food in oil...



Yay! Pork chops are browned, moved to a warm plate, and it's time to cook the onions, apples, garlic, thyme, and whatever else in the oil + pork chop fat...


Onions soften and brown some (really -- shitty camera and shitty lighting), and it's time to put the chops back in the greasy greasy pan, cover them with the onions, etc. and get ready to add the sauce...


Okay -- it's smelling great, but it's looking like the Gulf of Mexico in that pan...


After cooking the chops (covered) for 30 minutes or so, I took them out and reduced the sauce which also meant using a shitton of paper towels to try to soak up some of that oil slick...


And here it is garnished with the bacon that started it all. It really, really pisses my kid off when I take pictures of his food before or while he's trying to eat it, hence the presence of the fork and the Prison Break Buttermilk Cornbread (I think the cornbread is eight or nine days old now). Anything I can do to piss Steve off pleases me, so it was a good night. Oh, and this stuff actually tasted pretty good according to The One Who Hates Onions.


Vegetable of the Day: Onions (do they count?), dried thyme and dried parsley, because I was not in the mood to be chopping herbs or whatever. And, look, we had apples in there. Fruit is a move in the right direction...