Kale Pesto and Mushroom Stuffed Porterhouse Chops

July 16, 2015Katie

These Kale Pesto and Mushroom Stuffed Porterhouse Chops are delicious and healthy at the same time.

This week I sauntered into a grocery store near my house looking for something different. I’ve had just about enough of chicken over the past few weeks and needed something different. My eyes came to rest on some rather large pork chops and I looked at the label.

Porterhouse Pork Chops.

Huh?

Although I am a lover of anything bacon, I tend to steer away from pork in general, especially pork chops. Most folks attempts at them come out dry and rather bland so I guess that being my taste experience, I gave up on them.

A few years back the pork industry decided to re-invent the names for pork chops so us common folk could get a clue about what we were cooking thus offering what once used to be “chops” into Ribeye chops (what a Ribeye is to steak…well you get the picture right?), porterhouse chops and New York chops. These names replaced what used to be some confusing names like loin chops and rib chops. Who named these things anyway? Pork butt has always confused me because, well it isn’t from the butt but from the shoulder. And funny thing, ham is actually from the butt, but it’s not called “butt”.

Somewhere there is a butcher laughing at the confusion in all of us.

Since most of us know our steak cuts, we can now get what the heck these chops are about and how they are intended to be cooked.

The Porterhouse chop often has part of the pork loin attached to it, contains a T-shaped bone with loin on one side of it, and tenderloin on the other. If you get one with more tenderloin on it, the price will be a bit higher. This along with the fact that they are usually cut pretty thick, allows them to be a good candidate for grilling.

And that’s exactly what we did. I just chopped up some mushrooms.

And I added them into a pan and sauteed them with some chopped onions and garlic.

Just for fun, but you could skip this step, I poured in about 1/4 cup of dry red wine to deglaze the pan and let it bubble until it was almost gone.

Then I removed the pan from the stove and allowed it to cool on the counter top for a bit. When it was cool, I stirred in a couple of tablespoons of the Kale Pesto (click here for the recipe) that I made the other day. You don’t want to stir the pesto into a hot pan and mushrooms or the oils in it may separate.

Then I slit the Porterhouse chops all the way through to the bone so that I could stuff them with the above goodness.

I spooned in a couple of tablespoons of this mixture into the center of each chop, then I sealed them with toothpicks, brushed them with olive oil and seasoned them outside with salt and pepper. Then they went out to the grill where the Wonderful guy took over.

He’s really good about making those pretty diamond grill marks on meat. It’s one of his many talents.

As the meat cooks, it will start to seal shut around the edges. We grilled these for about 4-5 minutes on each side or until the center temperature was about 145º.

These were so huge we just had a meager side of grilled asparagus to eat alongside of them.

The filling keeps the meat nice and moist.

I believe I actually might like pork chops now.

Kale Pesto and Mushroom Stuffed Porterhouse Chops

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

10 mins

Total time

20 mins

Author: Katie of Dishin & Dishes

Recipe type: Meat

Serves: 2

Ingredients

2 Porterhouse Pork Chops, at least ¾ inch thick
1 recipe Kale Pesto (see link in blog post)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1½ cup chopped mushrooms
½ c. chopped onion
1 large garlic clove
¼ c. dry red wine (like Cabernet Sauvignon)
olive oil for brushing
salt
pepper

Instructions

Preheat grill to medium-high heat
Also heat up a sauce pan and add 1 tablespoon olive oil
Chop mushrooms, onions and garlic and add to pan. Saute over medium heat until mushrooms are softened and browning. Pour in wine and stir until wine has reduced almost to nothing.
Remove pan from heat and let cool (put in refrigerator to speed this up)
When cool, add pesto into pan and mix to combine
Cut slit across the center of pork chops all the way to the bone to make a pocket to stuff.
Spoon 2-3 tablespoons of pesto/mushroom mixture into pocket and use toothpicks to seal the edges shut.
Brush both sides of chops with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Grill about 4-5 minutes per side or until meat thermometer reads 145º when poked into center of meat.
Remove and allow to rest at least 5 minutes before eating.