Apricot Stuffed Pork Chops with Wild Rice Salad

Some of my earliest memories are centered around meat and potatoes. Every Sunday my family would pile into the car and head over to my grandmother’s house for dinner. Without fail she’d always serve a roast alongside a mountain of mashed potatoes. My sister was a roast beef kind of girl, but I was in it for the roast pork. I loved that roast pork not because it was brined or smoked to rosy pink perfection. My grandmother wasn’t that kind of cook. She grew up on a farm, fussing was not in her DNA. No, what I loved about her roast pork was the applesauce that accompanied it. It was one of the first times fruit and meat crossed paths on my dinner plate and it was certainly not the last. Today’s Apricot Stuffed Pork Chops are just another by-product of a food obsession hatched in my formative years.

Salty-sweet is, in my humble opinion, the greatest flavor combination of all time. Sure, it’s not as sophisticated as bitter meets sweet, nor as giddy-inducing as sweet on sweet. But salty-sweet satisfies two of our most basic human drives: our need for sugar and our need for salt. I don’t care how refined your palette is, your knees are sure to buckle in the face of salted caramel, and chocolate and peanut butter.

It’s no secret that I am an avid salty-sweet fan. I use honey in savory recipes as much as I use it in desserts. And I truly do believe this all stems from those first bites of roast pork slathered with applesauce. That contrast of umami-rich, salt-crusted pork with the sweet, slightly tart applesauce lives in my sense memory forever linked to the coziness of childhood. In other words, I will never not like roast pork and applesauce…or double negatives.

But, let’s be fair, roast pork and apple sauce is far from innovative. Sure, it’s a classic but it’s not a particularly tricky classic. I thought of futzing around with my grandmother’s roast pork recipe and toyed with the notion of growing up her applesauce with a hefty dose of bourbon, but it didn’t feel right. I am the (self-professed) queen of culinary experimentation but even I have recipes I won’t touch. Her roast pork and simple applesauce is hallowed ground for me.

So, without hope of innovation or gourmetization (that is now a word, you can thank me later) I decided to leave the roast pork recipe untouched in my moleskin notebook and explore other fruit and meat pairings. And since we’re in the middle of summer and chops were made for grilling, my mind inevitably landed on pork chops. I was later seduced by velvet-skinned apricots in the produce isle and these Apricot Stuffed Pork Chops were born.

Now, because I decided not to pay homage to my grandmother’s recipes, I was wide open to get as fussy as I damn well pleased. And to me, fussiness implies making a brine. I know it may sound like bragging, but the apple cider brine included in this recipe is the best brine I’ve ever made. Honestly, if you’re looking to cut a corner, the brine is not the place to do it. I would advise you to skip the stuffing before you skip the brine. Of course, I don’t think you should skip anything but who am I to tell you how to live your life?

The Wild Rice Salad that accompanies these Apricot Stuffed Pork Chops is a fun little riff on the decidedly over-played beet, walnut, and goat cheese salad. Now, I know that this salad combo is disappearing from restaurant menus because it was absolutely everywhere for a hot second and people are tired. BUT I still love it. It just works for me and, honestly, I am not a trendy human being. I’m a demanding human being and I demand that my beets be paired with goat cheese and nuts. I will, however, make a few concessions. My bf does not like walnuts, so pecans were subbed in. And you know what? I liked the pecans so much more, go figure.

You’ll notice I didn’t go the mixed greens or arugula route for the salad. Instead, I deployed wild rice. Now, why would I go and do a thing like that? Well, I really like carbs and I refuse to turn my back on them. But I am, however, making more of an effort to eat complex carbs because, you know, health. So, wild rice as a salad base is currently the answer. But don’t worry, there will still be simple carbs on this blog – I’m not made of stone.

The last thing I should mention is the stuffing, which is mascarpone-based, will drip. So, if you fear for your grill or cookware plan accordingly. We grilled our pork chops on our Webber kettle grill and the cheese mostly just dripped on our charcoal, which we were totes fine with. But if you want to err on the side of caution, put a drip pan down and clean your grill while it’s still warm that way the cheese won’t set up and annoy the shit out of you.

So, with these final disclaimers out of the way, I’m ready to unleash y’all on these Apricot Stuffed Pork Chops. The take a little forethought but they come together super quick when you’re ready to grill. Go get ‘em!

Enjoy!

Follow