Grilled Orange-Juice Marinated Pork Chops

Here's a nice summer main course that you can make on the grill and not have to heat up the kitchen.  You can use bone-in or boneless pork chops for this, although I think the bone-in kind have more flavor and stay moister better on the grill.

The main challenge with grilling pork chops is to get them properly cooked without drying them out. My marinade evolved over the years from a teriyaki sauce to its present citrus form. I think pork has an affinity for citrus flavors, and the Asian flavors are a nice match.

You can throw the marinade together in minutes, put it and the chops in a gallon freezer bag, and stick them in the fridge for a couple hours (or longer) until grill time.  Turn the bag over and slosh it around a few times.

For the marinade:

1tbs. peeled and chopped fresh ginger

1 large glove garlic peeled and chopped

1/4 cup dark soy sauce

3 tbs. dark brown sugar

2 tbs. peanut oil

2 tsp. sesame oil

½ cup orange juice

2 tsp. orange zest

Whisk it all together.

Cooking the chops:

Heat the grill to high. Remove the chops from marinade and save the marinade. Put it in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer so that it can thicken a bit. Take a small amount for basting and save the rest as a sauce for the chops.

Oil the grill, put on the chops. After a minute turn the chops 90 degrees to get nice grill marks and turn heat to medium. Depending on the thickness of the chops it will take about 3-5 minutes a side to cook them through. Baste them before you turn them over, and from time to time as you go. The brown sugar will burn if you don’t keep moist or let the flame get too high.

When they come off the grill let them sit for a few minutes then pour the hot marinade over them (not the batch you’ve been basting with.) I served this with grill-baked sweet potatoes and fresh corn. A pinot noir from the South of France rounded it out nicely.

Enjoy.