By One week. One week until I walk my daughter down an aisle in Louisville and hand her to a man I trust and cry in front of two hundred people and eat whatever they serve and dance with Connie and come home and sit at the kitchen table and realize that my family has grown by one, which is not a loss, which is a gain, which is the whole point of raising children — to give them to the world and hope the world is kind enough to deserve them.
Made soup beans Monday. The regular Monday. The Monday that doesn't change because everything else is changing. Travis and Jolene came over Sunday with Earl Thomas, who is now walking with confidence, which means walking into things with confidence — the coffee table, the dog next door, my legs. He walked into my legs and held on and looked up and I picked him up and he pointed at the stove and said something that sounded like hot. His first kitchen word. Hot. That's the right first kitchen word because the kitchen is hot and dangerous and beautiful and everything worth making involves heat, and Earl Thomas at fourteen months already understands what took me fifty years to articulate.
Clay brought Sarah to Sunday dinner. Third time she's been to the house. She ate soup beans and cornbread and asked me where I learned to cook. I said from my mother. She said that's the same answer her grandmother would give. She said in Whitesburg, everyone learned from their grandmother, and the grandmothers learned from their grandmothers, and the chain goes back further than anyone can trace. I said that's the same chain. She said I know. Clay watched this conversation and didn't say anything and didn't need to because his face said it all — the face of a man who has brought a woman home and the woman and his father are talking about the same things in the same language and the world, for once, is fitting together instead of falling apart.
The soup beans were Monday’s meal, but Sunday called for something with a little more weight to it — something that could hold its own against a table full of people I love and one more I’m still getting to know. These baked pork chops with a bourbon glaze felt right for a week like this: warm, unhurried, with enough sweetness to remind you that even the hard transitions have something good running through them. I’ve been making versions of this for years, and there’s something about the way the glaze settles into the meat that feels like exactly what a Sunday dinner before a wedding should taste like.
Baked Pork Chops with Bourbon Glaze
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 4 bone-in pork chops, about 3/4 inch thick
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/3 cup bourbon
- 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon butter
Instructions
- Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 400°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and set a wire rack on top if you have one.
- Season the chops. Pat pork chops dry with paper towels. Combine salt, pepper, garlic powder, and smoked paprika in a small bowl, then rub the mixture evenly over both sides of each chop.
- Sear for color. Heat olive oil in an oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. Sear the chops 2 minutes per side until golden brown. Transfer to the prepared baking sheet or leave in the skillet if oven-safe.
- Make the bourbon glaze. In the same skillet over medium heat, add bourbon and let it reduce for 1 minute, scraping up any browned bits. Add brown sugar, soy sauce, Dijon mustard, and minced garlic. Stir and simmer 3—4 minutes until the glaze thickens slightly. Remove from heat and swirl in butter.
- Glaze and bake. Brush half the glaze generously over the tops of the pork chops. Transfer to the oven and bake 20—25 minutes, or until an internal thermometer reads 145°F. Brush with remaining glaze halfway through cooking.
- Rest before serving. Remove from the oven and let the chops rest 5 minutes before serving. Spoon any pan drippings over the top.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 390 | Protein: 34g | Fat: 16g | Carbs: 18g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 620mg