You just can’t beat simplicity when it comes to food. Well, unless that simple food also happens to be ridiculously delicious. Which this dish is! These pork chops take minutes to prepare and about 15 minutes to cook, which makes them a perfect mid-week meal. The combination of fennel seed and pork is absolutely divine, especially when served beside a sweeter flavor like spiced sweet potatoes or the classic applesauce.
It’s nice to keep a couple of extra spice shakers around. You can make a bigger batch of this seasoning mix and keep it in a shaker for whenever you cook pork (it’s also really tasty on pork roasts and good on chicken too). If you don’t have a shaker to put the spice mix in, a sieve will help you dust the pork chops more evenly than sprinkling with your fingers.
Serves 4.
Ingredients:
- 2 lbs pork chops (about 4 chops)
- 2 tsp fennel seed
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ tsp cracked pepper
- Turn broiler on in oven (on “hi”) and let preheat for about 10 minutes.
- Grind fennel seed in a spice grinder or something like a Magic Bullet until it’s a fine powder. Combine with salt and cracked black pepper (you could also grind whole pepper corns with the fennel seed). Sprinkle liberally over both sides of the pork chops.
- Place pork on a roasting pan (to make clean-up easier at the end, you can line the bottom of the pan with tin foil).
- Broil on the first side for 6-8 minutes, depending on the thickness of your pork chops (mine were on the thin side so 6 minutes was perfect). Flip and broil on the second side for another 6-8 minutes.
- Let the pork chops rest 5 minutes before eating. Enjoy!
Real People, Real Paleo — Whitney of Nutrisclerosis.com’s Success Treating MS with Paleo
I love the idea of fennel on the chops! I just made nearly an identical meal on Monday but I used sage….definitely going to try the fennel next time.
Place chops on rack in… mixture on chops. Broil about 6 inches… until chops are nicely browned and done. Season with salt and pepper.
Broil on high or low??
Sorry, but you don’t “pre-heat” anything. You HEAT the broiler or you HEAT the oven. “Heat pre-cooking” is acceptable. “Pre” means “before” so you’re telling people to “heat before you heat.” That’s ridiculous. There are only two conditions of an oven; heated and unheated. There’s no such thing as to “pre-heat” an oven.
Are you serious right now? When you Pre heat an oven you giving the oven time to get up to the temperature you would like it to be. If you turn on a oven to 450° F it isn’t just instantly 450°F. Smh. Wouldn’t seem so ridiculous if you if possessed a little common sense on the subject. Maybe try looking up info on Google or something before you try correcting someone and end up looking ridiculous your self. That is all. Have a wonderful day.
Robert- this is about cooking, not about English grammar or usage. You really are a jerk.
One must really ponder this mystery. After all, what is pre-heating? Does it actually exist? Or is it only a figment perceived by the darkest depths of the ultimate machine we call our mind?
I’m a professional cook, and here to tell you that there is absolutely no question that your pork chops are way over-cooked. That’s the way my mother cooked. But not my way
Then, Stephen, why don’t you enlighten the rest of the readers on the proper amount of time to cook the chops and provide some helpful advice instead of just slamming the person who took the time to post this recipe.
I’ve done this a couple times, and the spices and seasoning do fit the bill for pork. Very nice. I’ve had to experiment in the placement of the meat from the broiler – first rack, 2nd rack? Also, my new oven says I should broil only on the rack they provided, not a flat sheet or roasting pan.
That said, with bone in chops (recipe above not specific), at about 4 in from the flame, I went for about 6 minutes. And they were super, as the author outlined. Good stuff.
So glad you enjoyed them and thank you for providing your feedback!!