Lunch
Chicken wrap time again, with supermarket tabouli.
- The $7.99 chicken is broken into quarters, and one breast is shared for lunch wraps, or $1.00 a serve
- The flatbread is 50c
- Hummus is $3.99 per container and we used about 1/6 or 33c per serve
- The tabouli side salad is $2.69 for four serves, or 68c per serve.
Lunch today cost $2.56 per serve.
Dinner
Since the last time was such a success, when we saw pair of thin cut pork chops in our Prather Ranch meat delivery we had to smoke them again!
Before smoking we brined the chops. We generally brine pork to ensure it stays moist during cooking. It also brings a little saltiness to the meat, which, when combined with the smoke, makes the pork chops reminiscent of, almost, ham flavor.
The slaw was left over from a couple of nights ago, and the broccolini was steamed in our new induction-ready pots from Ikea. We’ve opted not to have a microwave as we only used it for steaming vegetables and a little reheating. We’ve found the induction cooktop to be very good for reheating as it has a 195º setting that keeps reheating (or simmering) just below a boil. It seem it will be equally good for steaming.
We use the induction cooktop for the stove-top smoker because it’s very quick to come to temperature and start smoking/cooking, and it can be set to maintain a temperature and not overheat.
It would be traditional to take the smoked pork chops and give them a quick, hot fry off to make them look more appealing, and to create a little maillard reaction, but with the thin cut chops, we feel it would over-cook the meat and make it tough, so we left them as they came out of the smoker.
- The thin cut Pork Loin Chops were $9.82 or $4.91 per serve
- The organic baby broccolini was $2.69 or $1.35 per serve
- One Granny Smith apple went into the slaw, or 40c per serve
- Shredded cabbage is 33c per serve
- Two carrots were 30c or 5c per serve
- Add 12c for the dressing per serve
- We used about 1/8 of the $2.99 bottle of Trader Joe’s Sriracha BBQ sauce (this stuff is very addictive), or 19c per serve.
Dinner tonight cost $7.35 per serve and the pork chops were awesome.