Seared Pork Chops with Orange-Chipotle Glaze

Day 22-I went into the kitchen with a smile on my face. I was ready and willing to continue my cooking expedition. Last time I made pork Anthony told me that I cooked it just right, so I went into this recipe with a good attitude. Knowing all of this, I am now going to prove to you that positive thinking does not help people who can't cook.

As everyone knows whenever possible I've been trying to keep the food we eat when we cook at home healthy and nutritious. I got the recipe for Seared Pork Chops with Orange-Chipotle Glaze from Fitness Magazine. When I look back I'm assuming that I choose this recipe because of the word chipotle. I love chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Now I know never to choose a recipe based on one ingredient. Although I don't think that if I had really studied this recipe I would have foreseen disaster.

Things went well at first. I prepped everything easily enough. I mixed the marmalade, chipotle peppers, and parsley together (the recipe calls for cilantro, but with Anthony I have to use parsley instead). I seared the pork until golden brown and then the trouble began. I added the marmalade mixture to the pan and simmered it for a few minutes. Then I put the pork back into the pan, but the marmalade mixture was starting to burn. I turned the heat down lower and then the pork wouldn't cook. I can't eat pink pork, it scares me a little. So I wanted this pork to be cooked through, but with the heat so low it just wouldn't cook. Being the impatient person that I am I turned the heat back up. Only to completely burn the marmalade mixture, so I took the mixture out of the pan and left the pork to cook.

It was impossible for me to get all of the marmalade mixture out of the pan and the remnants continued to burn. It smelled like burnt marshmallows. So I transfered the pork to another skillet. The next thing I know the pork is burning! What a mess!! I took the pork off of the heat and plated it, only to realize that the marmalade mixture was now a concrete hard disaster stuck in a glass bowl. Well, there goes that. So I didn't have anything to put on the pork. This nonsense pretty much confirms to me that I am a horrible cook. How could I burn everything? And how could I have not realized that the glaze would become useless if taken off the heat?

Final Product:

Burnt Marmalade Mixture

This just looks so pathetic and horrible!

In the end the pork was overcooked. Not good. I'm not even going to try to attempt this recipe again. It would only bring this whole miserable experience to mind again and I would rather forget it. I would suggest others try this recipe, as long as you can cook. I stumbled across another blog Abbey's Kitchen, who seemed to have made this perfectly. Am I bitter? No, I just have take it as a loss and venture on.

No worries, my next time in the kitchen was much better. I even had dinner guests! More on the Turkey Bean Chili (much more my style of cooking) next time.