Ingredient

Pork chop

Modern pork is bred much leaner than the pork most chop recipes were written for, and a loin chop has very little fat to protect it. Cooked by the instructions people inherited, it comes out dry — and the fix is a shorter cook, a different chop, or a brine.

The chops, and which to buy

Loin chop

The classic — a round eye of lean meat with a strip of fat and often a bone. Very lean, dries out fastest, and needs the most care.

Chump chop

From further back, towards the leg. Slightly fattier and more forgiving, with a good bit of bone.

Rib chop

From the front of the loin, with a curved rib bone. More marbled than a plain loin chop and better eating.

Shoulder / collar steak

Cut from the neck end. Heavily marbled, cheap, and almost impossible to dry out. The best chop most people never buy.

Thickness

Buy thick — three centimetres or more. Thin chops have no margin at all.

Why the old timings do not work

Pig breeding through the second half of the twentieth century selected hard for leanness, and intramuscular fat in a modern loin is a fraction of what it was. Fat is what keeps meat feeling moist as its fibres contract, and without it the same cooking time produces a markedly drier result.

The other inherited habit is cooking pork very thoroughly out of caution. Guidance on how pork should be cooked is a food-safety matter, and the Food Standards Agency is the authority — FoodHQ does not publish safe internal temperatures. What can be said is that a chop cooked well past the point the guidance requires will be dry, and that following current guidance rather than an inherited habit is the starting point.

A brine helps a great deal, because salt allows the muscle to hold more water. So does buying a fattier chop.

Cooking a chop properly

1. Brine it if you have time — a simple salt-and-water solution for an hour or two transforms a lean chop. A little sugar and a bay leaf do no harm.
2. Dry the surface thoroughly afterwards. A wet chop will not brown.
3. Render the fat strip first. Stand the chop on its fat edge in the pan, holding it with tongs, until the fat is golden and has released.
4. Lay it flat in the rendered fat and cook over a medium-high heat, turning once, until well browned.
5. Add butter, a smashed garlic clove and sage or thyme, and baste for the last minute.
6. Rest for five minutes minimum. A chop straight from the pan loses its juices onto the plate.
7. Serve with something acidic — apple, mustard, a sharp sauce — which is traditional because it works.

What goes with it, and why

• Apple, in any form. The acidity cuts fat and the sweetness matches the meat. Not sentiment — it works.
• Mustard, in a cream sauce or simply spread on before grilling.
• Sage, which is the classic pork herb and stands up to the meat.
• Fennel seed, ground into a rub, which is the Italian instinct and excellent.
• Cider or perry, used to deglaze the pan.
• A sharp fruit — plum, gooseberry, quince, prune — which is the same principle as apple.
• Caraway and cabbage, the Central European pairing.

Common questions