Waffles lead to a new career
CHICAGO – Emily Groden hadn’t thought about waffles in years.
But while pregnant with her first child, she heard a podcast that mentioned the business of frozen waffles. Suddenly, the last few years of her work and life experience, a mix of lawyering and food tinkering, coalesced into an entrepreneurial idea.
Based on advice from parents she knew, she expected she would need to reach for a frozen waffle on some future, hectic morning with a toddler. But having studied food law, she also wondered what went into the ubiquitous discs. And so her journey began. Groden is founder and CEO of Evergreen, a Chicago-based company that makes frozen waffles sold all over Chicagoland and the United States.
But the story begins when she was a kid.
“I was actually that 10-year-old kid who walked around telling people she wanted to be a corporate lawyer,” she
I have experimented with different recipes to keep pork chops moist during cooking, such as searing them in the skillet for flavor and color and then completing the cooking process in the oven.
Whatever your favorite cooking method, another additional effective prep step is brining the pork chops to add moisture and flavor. At its most basic, a brine is a solution of water, salt and sugar.
Depending on the meat, other flavorings can be added to the liquid too, such as peppercorns, bay leaves, juniper berries and thyme sprigs. While stored in the refrigerator, meats can be brined for a few hours, such as for the pork chops brine below, to days or even weeks, such as for pastrami.
Master cooking teacher and cookbook author Alton Brown writes that “Brining is just about the best thing you can do to pork.” He made the observation in his book “I’m Just Here for the Food, Version 2.0,” (2006).
Brown explains in text and diagrams how brining changes the meat on a cellular level. It’s like a science lesson in good taste.
Without going into the weeds of chemistry and microbiology, the bottom line is this: learn to brine, and your pork dishes will be amazing.
Below is a recipe for brining and cooking thick pork chops (bone-in or boneless) in a skillet and then oven.
Before the recipe, however, here is a recap of some of Brown’s practical tips for optimal success in brining meat.
h Use resealable freezer bags to brine the meat. The bag enables you to press out the air and occasionally rotate the bag. Those steps allow the brine to completely cover the meat. The bag can be placed in a glass dish with a 2-inch side as a precaution if it leaks.
h Brown advises to never wash off the brine. I have seen other recipes that recommend a rinse. For the recipe below, my suggestion: experiment with rinsing and no-rinsing and decide for yourself if the flavor and moisture are impacted.
h Time the soaking session so that the brined meat can be cooked immediately. Although the meat can be removed from the liquid, wrapped for several days and refrigerated, the “sheer weight of the food will begin to squeeze the brine out within minutes of leaving the bath,” Brown wrote.
Share your favorite recipes or foodrelated historical recollections by emailing Laura Gutschke at laura.gutschke@reporternews.com.