J's Viet-Style Grilled Pork Chops
- sixstrings17
- Apr 20, 2016
- 2 min read
Along with the ever popular pho, most Vietnamese places would have grilled pork chops or chicken rice plate. Those one dish meals that usually come with at least a couple of grilled chops with a sauce (nuoc cham) using fish sauce as the main ingredient (nuoc mam or patis) as the dip. To have juicy flavourful chops, the secret to preparing the meat is to first brine for an hour. Brining will flavour the meat and provide the juicy tenderness desired. The rest is just grilling this up over a fire to provide the rest of the flavour. Use thinner chops or pound the meat first if too thick. We think this is better with a thinner pork chop for optimum flavour and tenderness. There's three parts to this: brining, wet rub, then grilling. This also works for chicken or beef, except there's no need to brine for beef.
Ingredients:
Time: 30m to 1 hour minimum to brine. Do not skip this step as it is what keeps the meat tender and juicy.
Brine:
1) 5 to 6 pork chops
2) 1.5 quarts cold water
3) 3 TBSP table salt (don't use coarse salt)
4) 3 TBSP sugar
Mix all ingredients in a bowl until dissolved, then enough to cover all the chops for 30m to 1 hour
Wet Rub:
5) 1/4 cup vegetable oil
6) 1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro
7) 2 TBSP soy sauce
8) 1 TBSP minced ginger
9) 1 chili pepper, minced
10) 1 garlic clove, minced
11) 1 TSP sugar
Mix all ingredients well, remove the meat from the brine, and rub on all sides.
Dipping Sauce:
12) 1/2 water
13) 2 1/2 TBSP sugar
14) 3 TBSP lime, or lemon, or calamansi juice
15) 2 1/2 TBSP fish sauce (patis)
16) 1 or 2 garlic clove minced
17) 1 or 2 small chili pepper, thin sliced
Taste the sauce so it's a good balance of salt and sugar, not too extreme on each end. Mix well so sugar is dissolved. Add more garlic or chili as desired.
To grill:
1) Fire up your BBQ (gas, charcoal) and let it heat up to around 400F degrees.
2) Place the meat and let it cook for about a minute, then flip over to cook the other side for about a minute. (Depends on your meat thickness. This is to seal in the juice, and it's not meant to cook the entire time on high heat as it'll burn the outside before it's done internally)
3) Once both sides are seared, lower the heat to medium or place the meat on the part of the grill that's less hot. Allow the meat to cook all the way through on lower heat (so you don't burn the outside), flipping both sides as needed.
Of course, you can also pan fry the chops but grilling adds authentic flavour.
Serve over rice, veggies/fruits, using the dipping sauce over the meat. You can also cut out the bone and putting this into a crusty bread (baguette or big hot pandesal) sandwich adding lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and garnishing with the sauce over the ingredients before serving.
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