Prep Time: 5 minutes. Cooking Time: 25 to 30 minutes.

The perfect pork chop begins long before you fire up the grill.  Fortunately, your local farmer will do most of the work for you.  Once you get this chop into your kitchen, cooking it to perfection is gloriously simple.

For this recipe, we recommend using a pork chop from a heritage breed porker raised in a pastured program.  The chop should be dry aged and thick cut.  For details about what goes into this chop, click here.

You do not need to marinate a good pastured chop, and we do not recommend a sauce or dressing with this recipe.  This chop will be very moist and tender, and the natural flavor is so good that a dressing or marinade will more likely diminish, rather than help, the taste.

Ingredients:

• pastured pork chop (cut 1 ½ inches thick)
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

To prepare: Follow your normal procedure to pre-heat your gas or charcoal grill.  Clean the grill grate.  On the grill, turn at least one burner to high heat.  For a charcoal grill, place the coals under the grill on one side of the pit.

Let the pork chops stand at room temperature for 30 minutes.  Brush the pork chops liberally on both sides with extra-virgin olive oil.  Salt and pepper the chops to taste when ready to place on the grill.

Place the pork chops on the grill over direct heat with the grill lid open for up to, but no more than, 2 minutes on each side.  The direct heat sears the chops, locks in the juices, and starts the internal cooking process.  The grill temperature should rise to 600 or 700 degrees during this period.  Ideally, the fire will flame up around the chops as the olive oil burns off and sears the chops.

Move the chops to indirect heat and close the grill lid.  Let the pork chop continue to cook for another 20 minutes. The grill temperature should be maintained at around 400 degrees during this time.  When a meat thermometer inserted into the chop shows 140 degrees, remove from grill.  Let the chop stand at room temperature for at least 5 minutes.  Serve.

Nutritional Information

Serving size (4 oz, or about 1/2 of our thick-cut chops):

Calories: 220 kcal

Fat: 12 g

Saturated Fat: 4 g

Cholesterol: 80 mg

Protein: 28 grams

Pastured pork is an excellent source of protein, thiamin, niacin, selenium, vitamin B6, and phosphorus.

More about Pork Chops

Cooking the chops over very high direct heat is meant to sear the chops and start the internal cooking process. The olive oil helps the chops brown. Do not worry if the fire flames up around the chops for a few seconds.

Do not skip the important step of resting the chop after cooking. The resting process allows the internal juices to redistribute, and makes very tender juicy chops.

We like to grill vegetables with our chops:  squash, corn, eggplant, tomatoes, anything coming out of our garden in the spring and summer.  However, this pork chop recipe is friendly to just about any side you place next to it.