Smothered Pork Chops and Potatoes in Homemade Gravy

Okay, folks, look, we back at it again and check it out. Everything that I've been doing has been like, really that down home, you know, that Southern, you know, cooking, right? So today I'm gonna show you how to do an old school smothered pork chops and potatoes. They're gonna be all done in one dish, so let's get it. Okay, so like we always do, we like to fly over these ingredients so you guys can see exactly what you're working with and then I'll explain them, right? But don't forget the full ingredient list along with the instructions and measurements is on my website, smokingandgrillingwithab.com and that's W-I-T-A-B.com, right? So now I'm gonna go ahead and pull this out here just like this and I'm gonna show you. I separate everything into as I need them, right? So this right here, these five bowls right here is gonna help me, this is what I'm gonna season with and get my pork chops ready, right? I'm gonna explain all of the rest, but right now we finna get right into this video. And then just talking about the tools that I'm gonna be using I'm gonna be using my cast iron skillet. Obviously I got a lid, this helps, you know what I mean? Now, for those of you guys that don't have a lid for your skillet, if you don't have one, you can always just put a, you know, a piece of foil over the top, but this right here will be best practice. All right, so I just moved my pork chops here. What I'm gonna do is add all of my ingredients in here like this, minus, you know, my flour, right? Cause we just gonna dust the flour, you know, on top. So I don't know if you guys heard, but everything to the left of me, you know, when I get to my sink, I got my hot, you know, soapy water, right? Now I'm gonna go ahead and cook like most of us do, best to use a whisk, but now I'm just gonna use a fork, right? And this is gonna be the seasoning that we use, you know, to put on our pork chop. Now, if you don't have none of my seasonings, you know what I mean? I suggest you guys, you guys can use the A, you know what I mean? The SPG work good with this too, you know what I mean? But this is a nice blend. And again, it's in the recipe, you know, index on my website. So it should look something like that. All right, now I'm gonna take these. These have already been patted dry. Let me just do it again. You know, once you pat your pork chops dry or any protein, even though they dry on the underside, they start to become, you know, a little tacky and moist, right? So we just get it like this. Now that water moisture that's in there, once that's gone, as much as we can get it, that'll help us with that crust too, along with the flour. Now, I'm gonna take this. Actually, we're gonna go ahead, do it like this. Let's get it right. All right, and now we just go ahead and season. I start off a little bit on the light side to make sure I got enough. Depends on how many chops you guys are gonna try to stretch this out to do, right? Now, one of the questions you guys will probably ask is, can you do this with bone in, or can you do it with, you know, boneless? You guys can do it any kind of way you want to. This actual technique works with any type of meat, even country style. If you guys wanna do that, country style, you know, pork, that works too. Okay, so what I'm gonna do now is, look, I'm coming with my little kosher salt. You know what I mean? We're gonna add a little bit of this to it. Then I'm gonna flip them over. Then we're gonna start dusting. Now would be a good time for you guys to, especially if you're using a cast iron, let's go ahead and put the fire underneath that. Then we're gonna use this extra virgin olive oil or whatever cooking oil you guys have, but it would be nice if everybody can start to cook with like extra virgin. All right, so now I'm gonna go ahead and just put a little bit of oil in here, right? Now we got a fire underneath the bottom here already. So I'm gonna go ahead and reduce this down to a medium high heat. All right, so remember we talked about dusting? Look at this, this is what I mean. We just go ahead and just sprinkle it on here. We're not doing the traditional, you know, fry like we normally do. You know what I mean? That's why I season, right? Right directly onto the meat. Normally if I was gonna fry these, you know, like in, let's just say I was gonna use some like oil, like to deep fry them, you know, then I would have used some flour, some seasoned flour also, right? But this is what you just want to get right here. This is what I call a dusting, right? This will remind you how I was when you was little. You know what I mean? Some of y'all, to be honest with you, I kind of like adapted this a little bit and made it just a little bit faster, right? I'm gonna just add this a little bit. And then the best thing to do is, which I should have been doing in the very beginning. If you guys notice now I'm holding my hand up, you know, squeezing and sliding my fingers back and forth. You know what I mean? Just so when you upper high, you get a little bit better coverage. All right, so now we hot enough. I can see it puffing just a little bit of smoke. So now we just add this in here, just like that. And to be honest with you folks, I'm gonna have to do these in batches. You know what I mean? Cause I got four big ones. So we'll leave them like this and we'll let them work. Now I'm gonna go ahead and raise my temperature up. My fire to neutral, like a medium high. Listen, these are thick. I mean, these are thin folks. We don't, we just want to hurry up and get that nice little fry taste. You know, look to them, you know what I mean? Flip them, but we don't want to cook them all the way. Okay, so I got a splatter guard. You guys might want to, you know, get yourself one of these. These right here make it easy for you to go ahead and keep all your greases in the inside. But you see that right there? That's what we're looking for. Now don't forget, I'm using a medium high flame right now. Right? So if you got them thin, like them family pack of pork chops, like they normally make, I mean, they sell, these only take about two to three minutes on each side. All right, so then when they're done, you guys can look at the bottom. You can look at that right there, that looks good. But don't forget, I said I wanted to do mine in patches, right? So I'm gonna set them there. Those will get a chance to rest, but we'll put this in here like this. Oh yeah. And then I got a little trick for you. You know, when you guys are using these little small, thin, they're not small, but just when they thin like that, I'm gonna show you something. When you cook them like this on one side, they stay pretty much flat. But then when it's come time to, you know, flip them over, they kind of like curl up, right? So you want to get yourself something a little heavy. And that right here, I use my burger press. You know what I mean? That's these right here. I was supposed to have these back in the stock, but long story about what happened on the container ship. But anyway, get yourself something with some weight so you can put it on top of there when you flip them so that you can get the even sear on the back, on each side. All right, so you see how I put this on there? Cause it did curl up. So look, boom. We don't want to overcook it. Look at that, right? Now we take this and just set it over here. Look how juicy it is. And by having this on the top, it steams and everything goes back. It's a lot of, a lot of uses for having a press. Okay, so listen, I reduce my heat. My fire underneath the bottom in here is at a medium. Let me double check. I look like it went down a little bit more. We just go with a medium, right? Now we separated our butter. You will have a bigger butter and a smaller butter, right? So now you just want to go ahead and add your smaller butter to it, right? Now let's go ahead and prep this onion. Okay, so I wanted to show you guys how I do my onions. You guys do them and cut them down however you would like, but I like to cut mine in these little circles. You know what I mean? They just, I like the way they look for one, and then I got to do all that work, right? So what I want to do now is make sure it's all coated, right? We got buttery, fine goodness in here. Then we put an infuser with these onions. Now, if you guys are new to making this, tell me if this is your first time ever making, you know, smothered pork chop. Tell me if you ain't never done this before, and then as you cooking, you tap back in and let me know your experience. For all my seasoned people, it's really about, you know, getting the right seasoning for everything so everything can bloom and marry. You know what I mean? It just turn out nice, right? Now, I'm going to leave these alone. I just wanted to make sure they was all coated. I feel like I need to put another onion in there. I know some of y'all are probably saying like, A.B., that's a lot of onion. We'll see. Watch how this wither down. Okay, so I'm cheating this a little bit. I'm using my mandolin. I got enough potatoes, right? What I want to do is just show you guys. I just want the consistent cut, right? So, we good. All of these are together. Now, we already gave our onions a head start, right? So now what I want to do is I want to add my potatoes to it. Some of you guys are looking at it right now just saying, man, I've been doing it a little bit different, A.B. But you see this right here? And if you feel like it need a little bit more butter, you can do it. But I think we got enough in here. What you want to do is just work it around. Look at them onions. You guys still think I got too many onions, right? So, remember, I would like to add just a little bit of salt. Now, I do watch my salt intake, folks. You know what I mean? But when you're cooking a dish like this, you want it to be able to taste good. I don't want to use my A seasoning on top of here, right here, because it gives a little bit of color. I want this to look just like what we were used to as we were growing up, right? So, this is just a little bit of a new, a different twist on it, right? So, we got this going. Let me go ahead and grab my salt. Just a pinch. And then, listen, you know I do everything with black fresh cracked pepper. Now, I'm not going to lie to you guys. You know, if you want to, you guys can add some mushrooms to this also. You know what I mean? This is when you make it your own. You know, make it, do whatever you want to do, right? But you see that right there? See how you can see the actual pepper on there? Now, once I get to this point right here, I'll let this cook for about eight minutes, right? I got a medium flame underneath the bottom. We're going to let this go ahead and just do its thing. All right, so now you guys get a chance to see. It'd be nice if all of our potatoes come out like that, right? But I put so much potato and onion in here, I can't get them all down on the bottom. So, I'm constantly shuffling them. You know, trying to do what I can, you know, to get some color on. Now, we're going to go ahead and get ready for this gravy, because these are about ready, right? We're coming up on about eight minutes. Medium flame underneath the bottom. I'm trying to keep my onions on top and just keep my potatoes, you know, as flat as possible. Okay, so I know some of y'all will probably be laughing because I'll be using paper plates, but don't forget, I'm the one that do these dishes, right? So, I got pork chops on a paper plate. Now, I'm getting ready to take these out. I don't want to overcook these. You know why? Because we're going to put these back in here and cook everything together and we don't want no mushy potatoes, right? We want everything to be good. You know, still have some integrity, meaning that we want to make sure it's still got a little bite, right? So, I'm going to add all of this to this right here. Now, notice I'm not using no paper towel because anything that drips, I want to be able to put it back in here because that's the flavor. And then notice I'm using this and none of the scallops or the potatoes are actually, you know, breaking, right? So, that tells you that we didn't get them too mushy. Now, I'm going to go ahead and turn this fire off. Right now, this is cast iron. It's going to carry some of this heat and I'll show you. You're going to need that heat going just one second because we're going to work on this gravy. Okay, so now I'm set up. I got everything over here on my board. That's getting ready to go on here, right? Now, I told you cast iron going to hold that heat, right? So, even though my fire is still off, we're going to go ahead and add the rest of our butter, right? You can see that. Look, now we can control it. Sometime when you get to moving, especially because I'm trying to explain, this process can go a little long with that heat under the bottom. You know what happens. Then we start coming up with that dark brown, even though dark brown or not dark brown, even though brown butter works with this too. I've always said that butter was burnt that way, but it's actually, there's a few recipes out there that we want to cook with brown butter, right? So, I kind of like just reeling in the way I explain and letting people know, right? So, now I can see I want to control my heat. Now, I'm going to put a medium flame underneath the bottom right here. Now, this is gas, so don't forget it's concentrated right here. All right, so let's go ahead and get this done. Now, this is where I'm going to change from myself using, you know, my rubber spatula to going ahead and using my whisk. Now, this is for those who've been sticking with me for a minute and know that I love making a roux, right? So, I'm going to start adding my flour to it. And this is the way I do mine, folks. I mean, I suggest you follow this type of way. I know some people like to just dump and go, but for me, I like to go ahead and move it around. You know what I mean? Add a little bit at a time so I can reduce the chance of me having all of those lumps, right? Now, we're going to act like we making a gumbo. We want to put a little color on this. You can see right now, it's already starting to turn, working its way to being tan. I never leave this. I should have said this when it was tan. I constantly just turn it. I want to make sure that I don't burn it. So, I'm constantly whisking. And this is about the color you want to get. We want to have a good, decent looking gravy, right? We didn't cook that flour taste out. That's really the purpose. That's half of the purpose. The other half of the purpose is to get, you know what I'm saying, to get that nutty flavor in there, right? So, now that we have it like this, it's time for us, we're not going to go dark like we would with a gumbo, but we on our way, right? So, now we'll start adding, right? Look at this right here. A little bit of a constant pour, right? But you notice how I'm still turning? Still whisking, folks. Got to keep that elbow and that wrist moving, right? You see how it thickens up? That's what that flour do. Once you introduce that flavor to it, right? Now you just want to go ahead and just continue to whisk, right, so that it doesn't thicken up right away. Remember, we want to be lump free. Okay, so remember we was dealing on a medium heat, right? I'm still here with this. Look at the gravy, folks. Now, we got some seasonings and some W sauce that's left. I call that a seasoning too, because it gives it a nice flavor, right? So, what we want to do is, we're going to start adding everything to it. Now, if you guys see anything that's swimming around in there, that is not burnt roux. Don't forget, we had fine at the bottom and I'm using a metal whisk, right? So, this picks up everything. Anyway, this is a well seasoned cast iron skillet. You know what I mean? So, things don't stick like you guys think anyway. You know what I mean? So, me just doing this right here. Now, I got to tell you guys, here go the real trick. Once I got everything incorporated and I feel like it has bloomed, it'll be time for us to taste it, right? So, you want to get yourself a tasting spoon or something so that we can find out where we at. Because listen, if the gravy tastes good right here, it's going to be good, you know, for the final product. This is what we do, folks. We taste as we go. And this is a great point to taste. Okay, so, let's go ahead and hit this and taste it. I want to see how it coats, right? We'll get all of this, everything on the side. Let me look at my fire, making sure I'm on a medium. Not medium high, but just medium, right? Now, I'm going to go ahead and just taste this and see where we at. That right there is right. Now, last thing I'm going to put in here is my heavy cream. Now, this part really is like optional. You know, this is something that I learned as a grownup on my own, right? So, that's up to you guys if you want to add it, but I'll show you the consistency, you know, what it looks like as it cooks, right? Now, I'm going to go ahead and get my spatula. We want to get it all. Since I took the time to measure it, let's get it all in there. Now, what I did was I reduced my fire down to a simmer, right? So, I got it on super low. As you can see the ring right here where it's starting to roll right here. Actually, it's simmering, right? So, all we're going to do now is we're going to bring everything back into play. I'm going to start by bringing this. Come on in here, look. Look at this right here. We're going to put these onions and their gravy in. I mean, these onions and potatoes in there. Remember, I talked about anything that came that dripped off right there. That's our flavor. We don't want to get rid of none of that, right? So, let's just make sure all this is inside of there. Them onions can go down a little further, right? And this'll finish cooking them. This'll make sure all your potatoes will be fork tender. All right, let's bring this around like this. Like everything to be nice and clean. Now for the pork chops. All right, now they had a chance to rest. Now we're going to put these in here just like you see, folks. One of these pork chops ain't going to go in there. You know why? Because I'm going to eat that one myself right now, folks. Don't worry, I'll save the big one. Ooh, look at that right there. Let me go ahead and get a picture of this real quick. All right, so if you guys come in here, let me just show you what it is. I'll let this rest in here for a minute. I took a phone call, so listen, I didn't let a lot of the steam out when I first looked at it. You can see it's still hot. But look at how that looks right there. That's what you want. Now I'm going to take a couple of pictures of this in this pan, you know what I mean? That there, my friends, is smothered pork chops. And if you didn't know, this is my favorite one-time meal that I would have for the rest of my life. And we got gravy. Come on, folks. Only thing that I ask for is a rice cooker because I need that in this rice. Okay, folks, look, I done already put it in this bowl. You know what I mean? Look, and if you guys come here, if you look at the amount of gravy that I have in here, man, I didn't want to really do all that extra starch because we got the potatoes, but this go great with gravy. I mean, with rice, too, you know. You know what I mean? I'm going to show you guys how I make rice. I don't make it just the traditional way. It's time for me to let you guys know, you know, the little secret of what I do. Hey, so look out for that. That'll be coming real soon. You know what I mean? But other than that, we're going to get right into this. Look at this. Yeah. Yes, sir. You know what I mean? Oh, it's so, so soft. Butter knife, folks. Look, I'm just, butter knife. Let's get this to go. Mm. But don't forget, I'm going to let you guys know, even if you didn't know, pork chop is really good and ready and stays juicy at 145. Did you see that right there? Ooh, talking about a mouthful. Hey, with that being said, cheers, y'all. Now, you already knew it was going to be fire because we tasted the gravy as we made it, right? Somebody get me some cornbread or a dinner roll. As my grandfather was saying, you got to be more careful. Got to do one of these potatoes. Let me just keep it real with you. Smothered pork chops. Everybody feel like they can make them. You know what I mean? Oh, these taste better than those and all of that. This video right here was just to introduce we can do everything in this one pan, right? So we use the cast iron skillet. You can do this in a Dutch oven, however you want to do it. Cast iron worked the best because you can get the best looking sear on there, right? But it's really about keeping them still juicy, right? Remember, 145, 150, and then you're good on a pork chop, right? Now, the texture of the potatoes was just awesome, but the flavor of the gravy, it really is the combination of all three of them together. And you know what? I did not give no love to the number one star, and I hate to say it. You would think it would be this pork chop, but the number one star is, ooh, the grilled onions. Hey, so let me know down in the comment section below, what else would you have added to this outside of mushroom? I'm gonna take that one away from y'all, because that's an easy one. You know what I mean? We could have done that. Now, if you're new to my channel, let me take this time to say thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to like, smash that subscribe button, and tell everybody out there. There's a channel out here to simplify these recipes and take the mystery out of cooking. And you know what I'm about to do, folks? It's Kool-Aid time. I'm out. Peace. Oh, I gotta tell you this too. After eating this, please don't operate no heavy machinery or no heavy equipment, because you will fall asleep.