Hawaiian Pork Chops

Labor Day weekend. The restaurant stayed open — holiday weekends are gold for a restaurant, the people who don't leave town still need to eat and they want to eat something that feels like celebration, and Sarah's Table on Labor Day weekend is: pulled pork. James's pulled pork, smoked for fourteen hours, served on a brioche bun with my coleslaw (vinegar-based, no mayo, the coleslaw that Mama taught me that Earline taught her that some ancestor probably taught Earline and the teaching is the recipe and the recipe is the family). The pulled pork sold 142 sandwiches over three days. One hundred and forty-two. James stood behind the smoker like a general surveying a battlefield and he said: "We need a bigger smoker." We need a bigger smoker. The five most dangerous words in the restaurant business. The five words that mean: growth is coming, whether you're ready or not.

A woman came in on Saturday. Business casual. Clipboard. The universal uniform of Someone With A Budget. She said she was an event coordinator for a tech company downtown and she'd seen the Instagram (CHLOE'S Instagram, the thirteen-year-old's photos are now generating BUSINESS LEADS) and she wanted to know if we catered. Did we cater. Did Sarah's Table, the restaurant that started with a cast iron skillet and a church potluck, cater corporate events. I said: "We do." I said this with the confidence of a woman who has never catered a corporate event in her life but who also once enrolled in dental hygiene school on a stranger's advice and graduated second in her class. "We do" is the answer. The figuring-out-how comes after.

The inquiry: a company picnic for 75 people. September 20th. Budget: $2,500. My brain did the math in real time: $2,500 for 75 people is $33 per person, which is tight but doable if I keep the menu simple — pulled pork, coleslaw, cornbread, baked beans, banana pudding. The Southern picnic menu. The menu that Sarah's Table was BORN to execute. I gave her a quote. She said she'd get back to me by Wednesday. I said: "Sounds great." I sounded professional. I felt like I was going to throw up. Both things are true at the same time. The professional woman and the terrified woman live in the same body and the body makes cornbread while they argue.

Elijah started full-day kindergarten this week. The half-day orientation month is over. He's there from 8 AM to 3 PM now — a full day, a real school day, the kind where they eat lunch in a cafeteria and have recess and take a math test and Elijah comes home with a backpack full of worksheets and stories and the exhaustion of a person who has worked a shift. He fell asleep at 6:30 PM on Tuesday. Six-thirty. Before dinner. I carried him to bed and he weighed nothing and everything — thirty-eight pounds of sleeping boy and the entire weight of motherhood in my arms. I made dinner for two that night: Chloe and Jayden. Spaghetti again. The Tuesday constant. Elijah's plate went in the fridge for tomorrow. The fridge holds leftovers and love and both are better the next day.

The catering woman called back on Wednesday. Yes. The company picnic is ours. $2,500. My first corporate catering gig. The first event that isn't a church potluck or a coworker's retirement or a neighbor's crisis. The first time someone with a clipboard and a budget chose Sarah's Table. I hung up the phone and stood in the kitchen and I thought: Denise. The nurse. The $50 tip. The woman who said "you can do two years" and I did two years and then I did eight more years and then I opened a restaurant and now the restaurant is catering corporate events and the corporate events came from Instagram photos taken by my thirteen-year-old daughter. The line from Denise's tip to this phone call is: everything. The line is everything.

The week that landed me my first corporate catering contract started and ended with pork — James’s fourteen-hour smoke, 142 sandwiches, and one woman with a clipboard who changed everything. On the nights I wasn’t calculating per-head costs in my head while folding laundry, I wanted something that honored that same sweet-and-savory spirit without the fourteen-hour commitment. These Hawaiian Pork Chops are what I kept coming back to: fast enough for a school-night dinner with Chloe and Jayden, festive enough to feel like the celebration I’d been quietly carrying all week, and pork — always pork — because some ingredients just feel like home.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 bone-in pork chops (about 3/4 inch thick)
1 can (20 oz) pineapple slices in juice, juice reserved
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated (or 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon neutral oil (vegetable or canola)
Salt and black pepper to taste
2 green onions, thinly sliced, for garnish
Cooked white rice, for serving

Instructions

Make the sauce. In a small bowl, whisk together 1/3 cup of the reserved pineapple juice, soy sauce, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, garlic, and ginger until the sugar dissolves. Set aside.
Season the chops. Pat the pork chops dry with paper towels and season both sides generously with salt and black pepper.
Sear the pork. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the pork chops and sear for 3 to 4 minutes per side until golden brown. Transfer to a plate — they will not be fully cooked through yet.
Caramelize the pineapple. In the same skillet, add the pineapple slices in a single layer. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes per side until golden and lightly caramelized. Remove and set aside with the pork.
Build the glaze. Pour the prepared sauce into the skillet and bring to a simmer over medium heat, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. In a small cup, stir together the cornstarch and water until smooth, then whisk into the simmering sauce. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes until thickened.
Finish the pork. Return the pork chops to the skillet, nestling them into the glaze. Lay the caramelized pineapple slices on top. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and cook for 5 to 7 minutes until the pork reaches an internal temperature of 145°F.
Rest and serve. Let the chops rest for 3 minutes before serving. Spoon extra glaze from the pan over the top, garnish with sliced green onions, and serve over white rice.

Nutrition (per serving)

Hawaiian Pork Chops — The Recipe That Reminds Me Every Catering Call Starts Somewhere