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(uplifting music) - [Announcer] The following episode of "Charlotte Cooks" is brought to you by Central Piedmont Community College and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Coming up on this episode of "Charlotte Cooks," we're going to make some delicious pork chops, along with some potato pancakes and some applesauce.

(uplifting music) Welcome to this edition of "Charlotte Cooks."

I'm Chef Pamela Roberts.

And today our show is going to be all about making some pork chops, some potato pancakes, and some fresh applesauce.

So let's get started.

What we are going to do today for our fresh applesauce is we are going to choose some apples.

Now, a couple things you need to know is, when you're choosing your apples, because you're making an applesauce, you want the apples to fall apart.

Your Granny Smith apples are nice and tart, so it's not going to be a very sweet sauce.

But also you want to use another apple that's going to be kind of sweet.

We're going to peel these because we don't necessarily want the peel in our applesauce.

And I'm going to show you how to cut them and how we're going to make this applesauce from scratch.

So we're going to take our peeler, and we're just going to take our peeler and just run right around here.

And the folklore about doing your apple peel is to try to get it all off in one piece, and then you throw it over your shoulder and it's supposed to form the initial of the person you are supposed to marry.

When we're making applesauce, we don't have very many ingredients.

And when you're buying applesauce, guys, always read the label because apples are nice and naturally sweet.

We don't really need to have any added sugar.

And now I'm going to cut these apples.

And the way we're going to cut them, obviously, we don't want to have the seeds or the core in the apples.

So we're going to cut them into quarters, stand them up like this, and just cut down.

And now we don't have any core or seeds in our apple.

Cut off any peel that's there down like that.

So what I've got here is I've got a Granny Smith and a Honeycrisp apple.

The Honeycrisp apple is a beautiful sweet apple.

They have a tendency to not go brown on you as quickly as some of the other apples will.

But we're also going to be doing a saute of some apples later on.

And now all we're going to do is just chunk this up.

So cut each of these wedges into about three pieces, so our pieces of apple are going to be relatively uniform.

And why do we need them uniform?

So they cook at the same rate.

All right, we're going to take a pot.

I'm going to put all these apples in here.

And the next thing we're going to add is some water.

Now you have to be careful about the amount of water you add because if you add too much water, your applesauce is going to be kind of soupy, and we don't want it to be too thin.

And you have to remember that the apples are going to release some of that liquid that they hold onto as well.

So put this onto a high and bring that to a boil.

Add a very tiny pinch of salt because that's going to help balance that sweetness.

All we're going to do is put this on and let this come to a boil.

And this is going to simmer until the apples are tender and literally just fall apart.

All right, so I'm going to put this on this back burner over here and let that simmer.

The next thing we're going to do is we're going to make our potato pancakes.

Our potato pancakes aren't a very complicated thing to make.

You can buy them frozen.

But a lot of times the frozen pancakes are made out of almost like a mashed potato.

We're not going to mash our potatoes, we're going to put them on a box grater.

We're going to shred them with some onion and potato.

We're going to add a little bit of nutmeg, an egg, a little bit of flour, some salt, and we're going to saute those.

So you need a nice bowl, nice big bowl.

Just go ahead and shred everything into the big bowl.

So shred your potato on the large hole of your box grater.

The kind of potato I chose for this, russet potatoes, they're very high starch and very low moisture.

Because we have a very limited amount of moisture in our russet potatoes, this is the reason when you bake a potato, it gets nice and fluffy inside, because all the moisture evaporates.

And when you take a red potato, when you bake it, you notice it stays kind of moist inside.

It doesn't get fluffy like the russet potatoes do.

Next, I've got my potatoes all shredded and they're very moist, I'm going to shred a little bit of onion in here.

And just cut your onion, put it right in here.

You don't have to have a whole lot.

Probably the equivalent to one potato to maybe a couple tablespoons of onion.

If you like a lot of onion, add a lot of onion.

And then we're going to add a little bit of nutmeg.

You don't want a whole lot of nutmeg, but the nutmeg really just brings out a really nice flavor.

All right, so we have onion, we have a little bit of nutmeg.

We're going to add a little bit of salt.

Just a little bit of salt.

A tiny pinch of garlic powder.

We're going to add an egg.

I'm only going to add a little bit of this egg.

Now, if I did two potatoes, I'd add the whole egg.

But I'm just going to add a little bit of the egg white to it right now.

And I'm going to add a little bit of flour.

The flour's going to help bind everything together.

Now, if I had two potatoes in here, was making a large batch, I'd go ahead and put that whole egg in here.

So this is what your mixture is going to look like.

It's going to be very moist.

So what you're going to do to make your pancake is you're going to take this and you're going to squeeze the living daylights out of it.

Now, when you do this, push it over to the side of your bowl so when you're squeezing the liquid out, you're not putting the liquid back into the other pancakes.

Okay?

So I'm going to get my saute pan.

I don't want it to be super hot, but I do want it to be hot.

And how are you going to tell?

Going to I put my hand down on it.

If I wouldn't put my hand down on it, then it's going to be hot.

So I want to turn that down to about a medium heat once it gets hot.

Okay?

Let's step over here and take a look at the apples real quick.

The apples are simmering beautifully.

Now, if you are making applesauce for a dish other than this and your family likes the applesauce with cinnamon or nutmeg in it, throw a cinnamon stick in there and it makes a really wonderful cinnamon applesauce.

Throw a little bit of nutmeg in there.

You saw me scrape the nutmeg from the nut.

Nutmeg, I'm telling you guys, get the nuts, scrape them, 'cause it makes all the difference between buying ground nutmeg and a really good nutmeg flavor.

So that's nice and hot right now.

I'm going to put a little bit of oil in the bottom of the pan, just enough to coat the bottom of the pan.

Okay?

Stir it around and make sure every part of your pan has it.

And now that it's all nice and hot, get my hands dirty again.

Come in here and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze like a crazy person.

Squeeze all that out.

And then we're going to take our pancake and just drop it into the pan.

Now, you want to spread these out a little bit so they don't all stick.

You don't want them to be thick.

Okay?

You want them to be thin-ish.

Okay?

I'm going to put one more in here and squeeze it again.

Get that moisture out.

And then spread it out in your pan.

Okay?

So we're going to let these sit here and cook.

And if you guys know anything about potatoes, you know they take a little bit to cook.

Okay?

So we're going to leave this on a medium heat.

We're going to put this onto another side and let these cook We're going to keep an eye on them.

And so we're going to just let them sit there until they turn golden brown.

So now, look, my pancakes are golden brown.

I've gotta get them turned or else they're going to burn.

And burned potatoes don't taste very good.

Get your spatula under there and just give them a little flip.

Okay?

So now here's something you guys need to know.

If they get golden brown on you before they are done, pop them in the oven, finish cooking them in the oven.

Okay?

So they don't continue to burn.

But these are going to be just fine.

Okay?

So we're just going to let those keep cooking.

All right, our apples are starting to fall apart.

You can see that they're starting to fall apart.

They're getting a little dull around the edges.

And we're just going to let those keep simmering.

And now my pan is hot.

Now let's talk about our pork chops.

These are bone-in pork chops.

The bone-in pork chops to me have so much flavor than just a plain loin chop.

Now, if you don't like the bone and you want to have less fat, then you can choose the loin chops.

If you choose nice, thick pork chops, you can make a little slit in them and stuff them with stuff.

But they do take a lot longer to cook.

And I find that when you have a big, thick pork chop, a lot of times people complain about the meat being dry.

So all I'm going to do here is sprinkle my meat with salt and pepper.

Nothing more than salt and pepper.

Just a little bit on both sides.

Once I do this, I'm going to slap it down in this pan.

Now let me show you a little bit about these loin chops.

Now, this was a mixed batch of chops here, so you're going to see some different sizes and different shapes.

So here we've got our little bone here.

And this is like the pork tenderloin.

And this is like the loin part.

And if you to buy pure loin chops, all you would get was just this part right here.

But with the bone-in, you get this nice little tenderloin on the side.

This is considered more dark meat for pork, and this is considered more light meat for pork.

So all we're going to do is put some oil in our pan.

And I like using a heavy cast iron pan for this because it really gives a nice sear to the pork chops.

I'm going to cook these two, 'cause these are the prettiest.

Put these in here and I'll cook this loin chop too.

The secret to getting a good sear on your meat is to not move it when you put it in your pan.

Just let it sit there.

And once again, you're going to be able to see the heat coming up the side of the pork chop.

You can see already it's starting to get a little white here.

You're going to see it creep up.

The outside of the pork will start getting cooked.

We want to get a nice golden brown on each side.

Depending on the pot that you're cooking, depending on your stove, don't follow times, follow your visual clues.

I'm going to let this go here for a few minutes while I get my onions and apples ready for my next saute.

Our applesauce is doing exactly what it needs to do.

What we're going to look for here is, now that all the water has been released in here, we are going to be looking now for this water to start reducing.

I'm going to take another look at my potato pancakes here.

They're ready.

Okay, I am going to put these off to the side and use these later on when I'm going to be plating up.

So now I'm going to do my sauteed apples and onions.

I'm going to let my pan get hot.

I've got some sliced onions here that I'm going to use.

Put a little bit of oil in this pan.

And I'm going to add a little bit of butter to this oil as well.

And so if you put a little oil into it, especially an oil that's made for high heat, it's going to raise that smoke point of that butter.

So you're going to get that rich butter flavor and not having it burn.

And this is going to give a beautiful richness to this dish.

Stir this up.

Let that get all melted while I slice my apples.

I've got my onions already sliced and ready to go.

Now, for this I'm going to use a Honeycrisp apple.

You can use any apple you like.

If you like Golden Delicious or you like Red Delicious, use those.

I'm not going to peel these this time 'cause I want that peel on there.

I'll make some slices with this.

And I'm going to do a green one too because I want a little bit of the green apple, the color on the plate.

And I probably need to go over there and check those chops.

Let me just do one part of these.

So y'all see how we're cutting this.

Now, you need to keep your knives sharp.

One of the most dangerous things we have in the kitchen is a dull knife.

When you have a dull knife, one of the things that happens is you try to put force on the knife to try to cut.

What's going to happen is it's going to slip, and that's where most people get cut.

If your knife is sharp, it grips and it cuts, and you don't have to worry about that knife slipping.

Let put my onions in here, get them sauteing a little bit.

And these are going to go right over those pork chops.

I just take those and give them a little toss, a little sprinkle of salt and pepper, which I happen to move all the way over here.

And while I'm over here, I'm going to do a quick little look at my chops.

Okay, see?

You can see how they're changing in their appearance on the surface.

You actually see this fat here starting to tighten up and it's pushing the meat up.

You can either take your knife and cut that a little bit so it stays flat.

You can use a bacon press to put those down if you want to, if you have one of those.

And if you don't, just don't worry about it.

You just want to make sure you don't pick them up and go, "Woo, look at this," and then put it back down, 'cause that's going to ruin the browning that you're trying to get.

Okay, let those go for a few more minutes.

All right, give these a little toss.

As soon as you start seeing the golden brown happening on some of the edges of your onions, sprinkle in your apples.

We're not going to cook these apples down like we are with the applesauce.

We want these to have a thick texture to them.

We want them to be kind of chunky.

All right, this is going to be kind of hard to toss.

Applesauce, onions, good.

There we go.

Now we're going to let this saute a little bit and just till everything gets wilted.

And then once it's wilted, we're going to push it to the back.

If you get a lot of flavor and stuff on the bottom of this, like some brown stuff on the bottom of your pan, we can hit it with a little bit of white wine just to release some of that and get it into the flavor as well.

All right, I believe these are going to be ready to turn now.

There we go.

Turn.

And you bubbled up a lot.

Now, you see how this one is curling up.

And this is because this fat here has a membrane in it that is shrinking as it cooks.

So if you don't want that to happen, you can come and make a little slit around that curved edge and it will lay that chop back down.

All right?

(pan sizzling) (utensils clanking) Okay, so these are going to take probably, maybe another five minutes.

They're going to be done.

I'm going to take them off.

I'm going to put a little white wine in there, deglaze it, finish that sauce off with a little butter, and we're going to be ready.

Let's look at our applesauce.

We are ready with this applesauce.

This stuff is done.

You're going to have all of your apples are going to be mushy and they're going to be falling apart.

And you can take your spoon and mash it.

You don't need a special equipment.

You don't need an immersion blender.

But the whole secret to this is to cook out that water, get it all the way down, and then your apples are going to be nice and soft, and you could literally just mush them up.

If you want your sauce super smooth, you can put it in a blender.

So now our applesauce is all set and ready to go.

Now, if you had put a cinnamon stick in here, you want to pull that out before you try mashing it, before you try blending it.

If you don't have a cinnamon stick, you can always just add cinnamon powder, okay?

But just be really careful.

You don't want to add too much cinnamon to this.

Not too much cinnamon.

Okay?

We got some color on these now.

That's exactly what we wanted.

All right, these are finished.

I'm going to turn my heat down on my chops while I do some asparagus.

So we're going to add a beautiful fresh green vegetable.

And the vegetable I have chosen today is asparagus.

When you get it, you don't want to use this whole stalk, because asparagus has a tough and a tender part.

And the way you find out, if you just take it and cut it, there's a good chance you are going to keep some of that tough part on there.

So you're going to take the asparagus and you're going to snap it, and it will naturally break at the tough tender part.

Just naturally.

And you can even take a handful of them.

You don't have to do them all at once.

That's going to be our green vegetable.

Okay?

And so let me tell you about how white asparagus is done.

You've guys seen white asparagus before, right?

Well, it's the same vegetable.

And so what they do, when it's growing, instead of allowing the green parts to reach the sunlight, what they do is the farmer comes out every morning and mounds dirt all the way up so the only piece of the asparagus that's sticking out is the very, very tip.

And that makes the asparagus grow, but it doesn't allow it to reach the sunlight, so you never get that chlorophyll reaction.

And that's how you get the white asparagus.

It's not a different vegetable, it's just grown a different way.

Now, what can you do with these things?

A lot of times we just throw them away.

Don't put them down your garbage disposal.

They're very fibrous and you'll be sticking your hand down there, picking a wad of what looks like string.

Throw them away, you can compost them.

Or if you really wanted to be clever, you can make some stock.

But you do have to remember it's very strong-flavored stock, so you have to have like a cream of asparagus soup or something like that that you're going to use asparagus for.

It's not a neutral flavor at all.

It is very, very strong.

And I'm going to tell you, if you make asparagus stock, your house is going to stink.

In my saute pan here, I'm going to take, put on some heat.

And just a medium heat, make sure my pan is hot.

I'm going to add a little bit of butter and I'm just going to add butter to this today.

I am not going to make it anything other than butter.

Asparagus cooks very quickly.

A really nice thing to do with asparagus is simply take it, put it in your saute pan, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, a little bit of olive oil.

My gosh, it's so good when it's on the grill that way too.

It is fabulous.

All right, so let's go.

My butter is ready to saute.

How do I know?

I got bubbles.

Okay?

Throw in your asparagus.

Now, I'm just kind of weird this way.

When I cook my asparagus, I like it all to stay in line.

A little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper.

A little more pepper on there.

It doesn't take long to cook, especially these small skinny ones.

Now, if you had the big, wide, sometimes you can get big, fat asparagus and when you find that, you can peel it.

And all you have to do to peel an asparagus, I'll show you on this one.

Hey, guy, you get to be peeled today.

Just these don't need to be peeled because they're so skinny.

But if you have a big one, sometimes the peel gets a little tough, and just lay it down and just take your peel off and leave your peel up to where your little spike is at the top.

Okay?

But you don't have to do this, like I said, unless you've got the fat asparagus.

And it just makes a big difference if you have your fat asparagus peeled before you actually cook it.

We just want to roll them back and forth in this heat and the nice butter when they're done.

We still want them to be a little bit al dente.

That means they're going to have a little bit of tooth to them.

They're not going to be soft and they're not going to be mushy.

Okay?

So these, by the time we're ready to plate, are done.

So I'm going to take these pork chops.

I only cook three, and I need to get them all outta the pan right now.

So I'm going to take... We'll only get one pork chop per person.

Okay?

We're going to lay that here.

I'm going to go ahead and get the rest of these chops out of the pan 'Cause I'm going to take a little bit of white wine, turn this heat up, and I'm going to deglaze this pan.

So now my pan is nice and hot again, and you don't want it screaming hot.

I'm going to add a little white wine to this.

Just enough to coat the bottom.

Bring it up to a boil.

You can see it's getting all that beautiful fond off the bottom of the pan.

Fond is called the brown stuff that sticks to the bottom of your pan when you're cooking.

I'm going to finish this off with a tiny bit of butter.

just to make this sauce nice and creamy.

(utensils clanking) And this isn't really a sauce, this is just a liquid we can put on here.

I'm going to bring this to a boiler and reduce it ever so slightly.

We want that wine to reduce so all of the alcohol is cooked out of it.

All right, so now we're going to stir this up and we got a beautiful little sauce we can spoon over our pork chops.

All right, turn that off so it doesn't break on us.

Now, our pork chops are here.

I like to put a little bit of garlic on my pork chops.

So you take a raw thing of garlic and just rub it.

You don't have to rub a whole lot, just rub it a little bit over those chops.

What does that do?

It gives a little bit of a garlic flavor, not a whole lot.

We're going to take some potato pancakes.

We're going to add some potato pancakes here.

I'm going to add a few of these on here.

We're going to lean our pork chop up against our potato pancakes so it has a little bit of a height and we could show him off.

Take some of our apples and our onions and put this on top here.

We're going to take our asparagus and look at...

This is just perfectly cooked now.

And see how easy it is to pick it up?

Put some asparagus on here so that we have a pretty, pretty, pretty green vegetable.

Take our applesauce.

Look at this stuff, guys.

No special tools.

Put your applesauce here on the side.

Nestle it up close to your pork.

We're going to take a little spoonful of our sauce and put some of that around the front of our plate.

So here we go.

Pork chop, winner-winner.

Here we have our sauteed pork chops, our potato pancakes, sauteed asparagus, apples and onions, and homemade applesauce.

Every bit of this is worth making at home from scratch.

You don't have to buy them in packages in the grocery store.

Fresh potato pancakes are marvelous.

Remember, finish cooking them in the oven if they get too brown on you in the pan.

Saute some fresh asparagus.

Enjoy that while it's in season.

If you'd like to grab these recipes, get them off of our website at pbscharlotte.org.

Thank you for watching this episode of "Charlotte Cooks."

And I hope you try this.

Let me know how you like it and we'll catch you next time on "Charlotte Cooks."

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