I just love that opening photo. I think it captures the feel of grilling perfectly! Right down to the light trail that even @tattoodjay would be proud of. I don't think I could have gotten any more lucky taking this shot and I think it might be one of my favorites of 2024.
The weekend before Thanksgiving we had some relatively mild weather so @mrsbozz decided that we were going to grill for one of our meals. In addition to that, she had some bacon that she needed cooked off for various dishes throughout the week. Since I had to cook about two pounds of it, I decided to skip the frying pan and bust out the Blackstone.
I set up an old plastic folding banquet table that we had sitting in the garage and then I threw down a piece of heat shield that I got from my parents that the wood stove used to sit on at their house. When I was growing up we had a free standing wood stove in the middle of the living room and I have some fond memories of that.
The heat shield worked out great as I was worried the heat from the Blackstone griddle would melt the table.
What I failed to take into account was the fact that the pressure regulator for my 20 pound propane tank is much different than the one on our travel trailer. The griddle got much hotter than I am used to it getting and as a result, I burned about 1/4 of the bacon. While I understand that some people enjoy crispy bacon, I took this stuff just a bit too far!
I didn't take any pictures, but trust me, it was BLACK!
While I was cooking burning the bacon, I had the chimney starter going getting ready for the pork chops that we defrosted and marinated to grill that night.
Meanwhile, since the griddle was getting so hot, I decided to clean it and re-season it with some avocado oil that I had in the cupboard. Avocado oil works really well for seasoning your Blackstone. It has a high smoke point and it is much healthier for you than regular canola or peanut oil. You can see the oil burning off and polymerizing to the rolled steel in the photo above.
After the griddle cooled down I put it away until next time and focused on my pork chops.
@mrsbozz and I have been getting these pork chops from Costco for a while now. You get something like eight or nine of them for $15 and they are really thick and clean looking. In fact, they are so thick, that I have been cutting them on the bias like you see above to help them cook better.
There is a restaurant down the road from us that has a steak and chops night every Wednesday and Saturday. They have some of the best pork chops I have ever had. My wife (who didn't eat pork before she met me) absolutely loves them and try as we might, we have never been able to get ours to come out the same as theirs.
They do something that makes their pork chops come out so tender that you can cut them with a fork. They basically melt in your mouth. I don't know if it is the cut of meat they use, the way they prepare it, or the way they grill it, but I am totally envious.
I've tried yogurt marinades, oil marinades, soy marinades, cutting the pork chop like you see above, pounding it with a tenderizer, cooking just a little under so it can come up to temp while resting, but try as I might, I just can't match their finished product.
My pork chops always come out having that same "chew" that a steak does and @mrsbozz just isn't a fan of that. If I slice the chop up into small enough bits she enjoys it, but I'd love to be able to make it as tender as the place down the street.
As you can see, juiciness isn't a issue. These have just enough fat still on them that you can keep them pretty juicy without severely undercooking them. We have started to use a marinade that my wife found online. It's heavy on the ketchup and mustard and then some other items to make it come out really flavorful.
Personally, I prefer pork steak over pork chops. There is quite a bit more fat on them and they don't have the issue with tenderness like pork chops do. However, since they do have more fat and they tend to have a bit more "dark meat" than pork chops, so my wife isn't a fan of them.
Part of me wonders if the place down the street is using some kind of sous vide technique to get them to a safe temperature and then they just finish them off on the grill. That could explain how they are able to keep them so tender, but it's a fairly small kitchen, so I am not sure they have room for equipment like that.
Perhaps I will never know just how they do it, but that doesn't mean I am not going to keep trying to perfect my technique. Maybe one day I will get it right!
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