Pickle-Brined Pork Chops with Sweet and Spicy Peppers

I was watching The Kitchen on the Food Channel this morning with Brian (one of the few food shows he will watch with me for a little while as he says they make him too hungry) and he really thought this recipe looked good. Though like Beth, he likes his pork steaks, he liked how Jeff pounded these pork rib chops really thin.  Since I copied the recipe down for me to try one day, I figured I'd share it with you guys.  Jeff said he also called it Pork Schnitzel!  I wasn't really sure until this morning what schnitzel was, but have since educated myself using Google!

Pickle-Brined Pork Chops with Sweet and Spicy Peppers
4 Servings / Recipe by Jeff Mauro, The Kitchen.

1 cup dill pickle juice (preferably leftover from a jar of pickles)
1 cup whole sweet piquanté peppers from a deli olive bar, such as Peppadews,
plus 1/4 cup of the pepper juice
Four 1-inch-thick bone-in pork rib chops
2 orange bell peppers, sliced 1/2-inch thick
1 medium yellow onion, sliced
1/4 cup olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 large eggs, whisked
2 cups panko breadcrumbs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
8 lemon wedges, for serving

Combine the pickle juice, pepper juice and pork chops in a large zipper-top bag. Brine at least overnight and at most 24 hours, flipping the bag halfway through.
Preheat the oven to 350⁰F. Toss the piquanté peppers, bell peppers and onions with the olive oil in a bowl. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Transfer to a baking sheet and roast until slightly charred and soft, about 20 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 200⁰F and keep warm until ready to serve.

Take the chops out of the bag (discard the brine) and dry them off with paper towels. Place a chop between plastic wrap and pound with a meat mallet until 1/2-inch thick. Make sure you pound around the bone but keep the bone intact; this adds flavor and plating dramatics. Repeat with the remaining chops.

Set up an F.E.B. station with flour, egg and breadcrumbs in separate shallow containers; season the breadcrumbs with salt and pepper. Season each chop with salt and pepper, then dredge in the flour, coat with the egg and then coat in the breadcrumbs, ensuring the breadcrumbs adhere to all the nooks and crannies.

Heat a large skillet over medium heat, add the vegetable oil and heat until very hot. Working in 2 batches, fry the chops 2 at a time until golden on each side, 4 to 5 minutes a side. Keep the chops warm on a wire-racked baking sheet in the oven while you repeat with the remaining chops.

Plate each chop over a serving of the peppers and onions and serve with 2 lemon wedges to squeeze on top.

I just noticed the recipe calls for a whole cup of sweet peppadews ~ that seems like a lot to me. I think I'd prefer to just eat them cold from the refrigerator as I made the recipe......LOL

(I do love those olive bar peppadews!)

I don't believe I've ever had a peppadew, sweet or otherwise.  I figured I'd look in the pickle/jarred peppers section of the market to see what they were, as I missed their appearance on the show and hurried to the Food network's website to see what it was he added, as Brian told me all he heard was that it was some kind of jarred sweet pepper, which threw me for a loop. We were upstairs so I couldn't use the "reverse" button I have downstairs so I could see and hear him one more time.  I sure wish I had that box upstairs as well but we already spend a small fortune every month with Cox cable, as we have Internet, phone and cable TV with them! We're such a small market that Cox is IT in New Orleans.  If you want cable and not dish or satellite, Cox is the only game in town.  And boy, people really hate them, too, as you would with any monopoly!

Our grocery does have an olive bar, though, so I will look for those puppies there first! I almost forgot about him mentioning the olive bar.

Well, looking at the recipe again, Beth, he used the peppadew juice for the marinade but you could mix as many or as few peppadews as you wanted to go with the bell peppers and the onions to char, Beth. I have to admit the charred peppers and onions sounded good to me to serve on the side. What are they like -- anything like pepperoncini peppers?  That's what I think of when I think of sweet pickled peppers.  Or are they spicy?  Help a girl out here, will you?!

The finished dish looked really good on the show, too!

Michelle, the peppadews are a sweet pickled pepper, usually sold whole (I get them at the olive bar), about the size of a walnut.  Sometimes they have a bit of heat to them but usually it's just a sweet pepper that can be addictive, especially when eating crackers, salami, olives & peppadews as I get '$hit-faced' on my vodka.....LOL

I think the charred peppers & onions are nothing more than sweet red/green peppers that are put over an open flame to slightly cook the flesh & make the skin easy to remove.  I'm not a fan, but that's just me.  The onions are good but I don't care for roasted peppers much at all (I usually just slice my red peppers and lightly cook with the onions after they're nice and caramalized, more like I would do with a stir-fry....tender-crisp.

Let's see if this works:




Peppadew is the trademarked brand name of sweet piquanté peppers grown in the Limpopo province of South Africa. This type of piquante pepper was first discovered in early 1993 and introduced to market later that same decade. The name is a portmanteau of 'pepper' and 'dew'. Although the pepper is sometimes described as a cross between a pepper and a tomato, this description is not botanically accurate, and refers only to the resemblance in color and size between peppadew and cherry tomatoes.
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