Pork Chops, Sweet Potatoes, Spinach

Here I am again to tell you about my Thursday night dinner and my sweet potato snack I made from the leftovers. 

Thursday night I made pork chops with diced, steamed sweet potatoes and sauteed spinach.

Sweet Potatoes 
Steaming sweet potatoes takes some time, 15mins about; so I start the potatoes 5min before cooking the meat and veggie


1. Dice up the potato(es) (I used one very large sweet pot. for both of us) diced into about 1" pieces
2. Steam until tender (can easily pierce it with a fork)
3. Remove from heat and keep covered until ready to serve
4. I love sweet potato so no frills are necessary for me, I spray some olive oil on them using my Misto (love my Misto) and add fresh ground pepper.

 Pork Chops:

1. Removed the chops from the fridge, salted and  left out for an hour before cooking in order to bring the meat closer to room temp. This allows for even cooking of the meat and the salt removes excess water from the pork which was previously frozen.

2. After an hour I wiped down the meat to remove some of the salt and excess water - I wipe down all meat with a paper towel rather than wash it for two reasons which go together - 1- the heat will kill any bacteria so there is no need (here is the 2nd reason) to contaminate your sink and counters with raw meat from the splashing often caused by running water over your meat.

3. I sprinkled the chops with a new spice I bought - Charnushka, It was a great, subtle addition to the pork chops.  I also added fresh ground pepper.

4. In a large saute pan, I heated about 2Tbs of crushed red pepper olive oil  (I make this routinely in small batches by just barely heating olive oil and crushed red pepper on the stove and putting it in a spice jar).  I placed the chops in the very hot pan for about 3min on each side, until they were browned and cooked just medium. 

5.  I them let them rest under foil as I prepared the spinach. Resting is extremely important, the meat will continue to cook up during this period of 5-10min - this is why I remove meat from heat just before it is done - the outcome is very juicy, tender meat.

Spinach:
1. I quickly rinsed the pork chop pan, leaving some of the juices and tidbits of pork stuck to the pan.  I reheated the pan, placed half a bag of washed spinach in the pan and added some red pepper olive oil, fresh ground pepper, dash of salt and 1/3cp of cooking sherry.

2. Once the spinach started to reduce in size, I added the second half of the spinach, tossing fairly constantly until the water from the spinach was reduced to a nice browned colored broth and the spinach a dark green

You can also add garlic in with the mix, but to be honest I do not like garlic in my spinach, although I love it in just about everything else.  I also love to add sauteed mushroom/corn. 


After dinner I placed the remains of the pork left on our plates - bone and fat - into the freezer, adding to my slow growing meat stock ingredients.  There were still a good amount of sweet potatoes left, so I put them in the fridge for the next day.

The next day Skillet Sweet Potatoes:

1.  I tossed the leftover, diced sweet potatoes in Pumpkin Seed oil, dash of salt and fresh ground pepper
2. I heated a small skillet and added the potatoes, cooking until they were just a bit crispy

They were delicious!