Pork Chop Meal

Remind you of any recent cards? I actually went back looking through this box because I remembered posting pork chops, fresh tomatoes, and rice recently–but it turns out that was from Quincy, Massachusetts.

Here’s a less composed iteration from the February 11, 1959 edition of The Daily Oklahoman:

Pork Chop Meal   6 pork chops, cut 1-inch thick or pork steaks cut in pieces for serving 1/4 1/4 c. flour 2 Tbsp. shortening 3/4 c. uncooked, washed rice 3 c. tomatoes 1-1/2 t. salt 1/2 t. pepper 3 T. chopped onion 3 T. chopped green pepper Dredge pork chops in flour. Melt shortening in skillet. Brown chops overflow heat on both sides. Combine rice, tomatoes, onion, green pepper and seasonings. Pork over chops. Bring to boil, cover and simmer on thermostatically controlled top burner set at 175-200 degrees for 45 minutes or until meat is tender.

 
Mmph. Thermostatically controlled top burner. Well, most modern top burners (gas, electric, and induction alike) are thermostatically controlled, actually, inasmuch that “thermostatic control” means that some mechanism measures the temperature of the element or the parts near it and adjusts the heat output to maintain a consistent degree of heat, so that a “low” doesn’t turn into a “high.” But few gas or electric ranges permit you to choose the degree of the heat.

Complicating further the value of that instruction is the variable heat transfer offered by the materials you’d often find used to make cookware (something we talked about a bit in the post for crayfish with spicy court bouillon from Martinez, California).

The simplest solution is the one this box uses–to transfer the cooking to the part of the kitchen that’s thermostatically controlled to the degree and cooks food from every direction: the oven.

From a box sold in Nampa, Idaho.

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