Maple Pepper Glazed Pork Chops

Let’s talk about two things right quick before we jump into the pork chops… but if you’re just looking for the recipe, here’s a clicky to skip all this boring chat.

I think I’ve picked the right career path

Elaboration: I am the IT department where I work. I handle everything from printers, PCs and tablets to servers, switches, and firewalls… exciting right?

There is constantly some sort of project underway here it seems and currently we are in the dead center of switching from a 20 year old phone system to a brand new VoIP installation. For the most part, everything went quite smooth… but now is the fun part, having to clean up the ridiculous amount of little issues that pop up.

Even though this week has been so very painful, I still enjoy coming to work. Well… I don’t hate it at least, I would still rather be doing something fun.

I’ve been good with my half marathon training

After last year’s deferral of my half marathon, thanks to my knee injury, I didn’t run for a long time. After a good half year of being a lazy bum, I started running again back in March and at that point it was pretty much like starting from scratch… only capable of a couple minute intervals at a time.

Fast forward 2 months and I managed to complete the 3.5 mile CDPHP Workforce Challenge with the other 10,000 people that showed up. It was actually a pretty smooth run considering the huge crowd.

I am always amazed at how friendly everyone is at these events. Even the people that hang out on the streets to watch are super nice and motivating. With that said, I still can’t help but think that everyone is lying to me as they cheer you on towards the end. “One more mile!” or “It’s all downhill from here”… sure it is buddy, yea right.

Pork chops, my least favorite cut of meat by far (sorry pig, but all of your other portions are absolutely delicious). It takes a damn good sale for me to buy some pork chops and once they are in my fridge, everything else must be gone first before I submit and decide that its time to cook them.

That used to all be true, until I realized that if you smother them with a maple glaze (and make sure not to overcook them) then they go from being boring pork chops to delicious… pork chops.

Just make sure you go out and buy the most expensive bottle of Aldi maple syrup you can find, that is most definitely the key. Also note that that last statement is complete sarcasm and while I do enjoy a high quality maple syrup with my waffles, I wasn’t going to use the expensive maple syrup on pork chops… it deserves much better than that.

A tip when cooking pork chops: You know that fatty disgusting part on the end that you usually cut off (sometimes before cooking, sometimes after cooking)? Leave it!

If you spend the first three to four minutes on the stove with the pork chop vertical and the fat resting directly on the pan not only do you get those juices flowing around in your pan, but the fatty part gets crispy and tastes more like bacon… and bacon is delicious.