Pork Chops in Balsamic Cherry Sauce

Hello foodie friends! This was a delicious success that I will definitely make over and over! The recipe came from my adorable Junior League of Ogden cookbook I picked up in Park City. I'd say it  probably took 30 minutes of hands on time which for the taste of it was well worth it!  I served the dish with some wild rice blend from Trader Joes, which was a perfect complement to the dish. Any sort of wild rice or rice and lentil mix would be perfect with this. I wish I could have served it with some steamed green beans or asparagus but we didn't have any fresh so no dice, only salad! BUT when you make it, have some green beans on hand, they'd be perfect with this! Pork loin was on sale at Wegman's this week so its going to be a porky week, but its usually cheaper to buy a whole pork loin and cut it up yourself than to buy pre-cut chops. One pork loin usually costs $19 and you can get 12+ chops out of that, so not too bad just over $5 gets you the meat in this dish? Sweet!

Here is the final dish:

Pork Chops in Balsamic Cherry Sauce

Yum Yum Yum! This was a ROCKIN' dish!

 Ingredients:
 4- Pork chops (~5oz which is aprox 1" thick slices)
2/3 c. balsamic vinegarette
2 Tbs Butter
2 Large shallots
2/3 c. low salt chicken broth
1/2 c. dried cherries (I used Bing but tart would work too!)
Salt and pepper to taste

Pour 1/2 of the vinaigrette in a dish and place pork chops in the vinegarette. Place the rest of the vinaigrette over the pork chops. Let stand for 10 minutes

I didn't have bottled balsamic vinaigrette, so I whipped this up with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, and Dijon mustard

Marinating pork chops!

 While the pork is marinating, slice the shallots thinly and add butter to a medium heavy skillet. When the 10 minutes marinating is almost up, start melting the butter and spread it around the pan.

Place pork chops in the pan, sprinkle with pepper, and saute until brown (~3 minutes per side). RESERVE THE MARINADE

Don't those look grand? Notice the dish with the marinade on the side

Remove pork chops from the skillet and set aside. Place Shallots into the skillet and cook ~1 minute until until softened.

Mmmm shallots! And the marinade is STILL there!

Add broth, cherries, and reserved marinade.

Bring to a boil, scraping up the browned bits

Nearly boiling and smelling pretty darn good!

Return pork to the skillet and simmer until it is cooked through, the cherries are tender and sauce is slightly reduced (~2 more minutes per side). Transfer pork to plates and top with sauce.

Voila! So yummy! Seriously loved this, it got 3 "This is really good"s from Matt

This recipe made me pretty happy! I'm not a big pork fan (unless its bacon), but I'm trying to make sure I do a variety of meats and meatless dishes on here so that there is hopefully something for everyone!  Matt says it had a nice balance of flavors and everything blended really well! I'd say this dish made the $25 cook book worth it! Totally company worthy, you could up-scale it really easily (there was WAY more sauce than needed for 4 pork chops) and there isn't anything too exotic in it! Of course if you're having trouble finding shallots, you are more than welcome to use 1/2 of a small red onion sliced thinly.
With this dish I am sure there will be Happy Eating!