Recipe Fridays: Pork Chop Sandwiches, maaan!

“What is THAT?!” you’re probably screaming at your monitor right now.  If not, you should start, ‘cuz I’m about to rock your sandwich-world, baby.

A short while back, I posted on Facebook that I’d “accidentally” bought 10 pork chops.  (They were just under a dollar cheaper per lb. if you bought 3+ lbs.; I wanted 2-4 pork chops and figured 3 lbs. couldn’t be that many more, right?  I didn’t realize pork chops individually were so light!)

James of The Eaten Path wrote, “Pork chop sandwiches!!!” with a link.  A link that would change my life forever, and it will change yours, too, if you just click through or watch it below.  Seriously.  (Note: it’s probably better if you’re high, stoned out of your mind, but if you have that quirky sense of humor like I do, it’s still pretty funny.)

(Oh, also note: if you’re going to watch it, you need to turn up your volume, and not be at work.  There’s no nudity or anything, but it isn’t really good to blast this at work, unless you work from home, in which case, go right ahead.)

So what, you say?  There’s no recipe there.  There is nothing but GET THE F* OUT WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE (what, you didn’t watch it yet?  Uhhh, spoiler alert!).  But it was enough.

A week or two after I’d frozen the pork chops I didn’t use, I was sitting at work and suddenly thought “Sriracha.  Mayonnaise.  Marinate pork chops in that mixture for wonderful… PORK CHOP SANDWICHES MAAAN!!!

And that’s how my mind works.  Well, actually, I kind of thought this would be a sort of take off on the ever popular & trendy banh mi, except created by a girl who knows about as much about banh mi as ummm… someone who doesn’t know very much at all.  Actually, I just wanted to put pickled veggies inside, a little hot sauce, maybe some herbs, some lettuce I knew I had, and make a phenomenal sandwich.  Ok!  Works for me!

The first pic is actually of the sandwich I made in the morning for my lunch bento.  Oops, I see now that I forgot the scallions, doh.  This pic here is the one I made on the first night, which was absolutely delicious.

You want to know how to make this for yourself?

Ok, I’m nice, I’ll share.

pork chops (I used bone-in and removed the bones after cooking)
Sriracha
mayonnaise
hoisin sauce
salt/pepper
takuan aka pickled daikon (the yellow stuff)
chopped scallions
some sort of leafy green (I used a lettuce mix from my CSA; you can use Romaine or anything you like)
bread… I think this was regular Italian/hero bread… I just grabbed what my supermarket had

Mix Sriracha with mayo – to taste – you want it a touch spicier than you like, because it’ll mild itself a bit.  Salt/pepper to taste.

Dollop a spoonful of the mayo mixture onto each pork chop (careful, do NOT contaminate the remaining mayo mixture!), then massage into meat on both sides.  Let rest/marinate for 30 minutes or so.

Preheat oven (I used my toaster oven; it IS summer, afterall! and lined the tray with tin foil for easy cleanup) to 350.  Depending on how thick/thin your chops are, 15-20 minutes should do it – mine were a touch overcooked at 20.  Remove from heat and let rest.

Prep other ingredients for assembly.  Slice bread approximately same length as pork chop.  Spread Sriracha mayo mixture on one side of the bread.  Spread a little hoisin sauce on the other (this helped temper the heat greatly for me because I was sweating so bad when I ate my first sandwich!).  Cut takuan into slices as long as the sandwich.

from the other side

Assemble sandwich.  (I cut the bones off the pork chops obviously.)  Takuan slice on one side, greens on the other, pork chop in the middle,

PORK CHOP SANDWICHES, MAAAAAAN!!!  🙂

side view of the tin foil surprise

EAT IT AND ENJOY IT.  For it is delicious and it is good and life will never be the same.

Seriously, I don’t think I really needed to give you a recipe, but what the heck.  I haven’t done a Recipe Friday in forEVER, and I figured it was time.  But you know, feel free to play around with the ingredients, the method, even the meat, whatever!  And let me know how it turns out!  I love the slight kick (since I’m still not that into eating super spicy things) from the Sriracha tempered by the mayo & hoisin sauce, the sweet pickle chiming in, and the greens were there for background, not players really in this story.  Everything just made me so happy when I was eating it, and I do love creating things in my mind and then making them reality… and reality, in this case, was much awesomer than fantasy.  Mmm baby.  (I would have loved to use cucumbers and pickled carrots, but I didn’t have any… doh!)

Happy eating!!!