Pork chops with Mandarin orange sauce

This is just about everything you'll need to make this dish if you want the plain version. I started with this simple recipe and expanded on it, but we'll discuss that later. The way i originally learned this recipe is to take 2Tbps vegetable oil (I used safflower because it was what we have on hand in our goofy kitchen) . Heat the oil over medium high heat and add pork chops.
Heat pork chops about 3 minutes on each side. The goal here is not to cook the meat through, but to sear the outer sides. As we all know, searing meat helps keep the juices in while cooking and helps you avoid that piece of shoe leather that pork often threatens to become.
After you've seared both sides dump the can of drained mandarin oranges overtop, sprinkle liberally with ground ginger and a smidgen of black pepper and lid. Cook over medium-low heat for the next 45 minutes. Remove pork chops from skillet along with the few pieces of oranges that remained intact. If you stop at this point, you've got the simple recipe. I wanted to do something more with the remaining oranges in the pan, so I started improving here:
To get a good mandarin orange sauce, add 1Tbsp honey, 1Tbsp butter, and slowly add 1/4cup water with 1Tbsp cornstarch whisked in (to avoid clumps- make sure the cornstarch and water mixture is completely smooth!) Keep stirring and cook over medium heat to desired thickness. Sprinkle with a little additional ginger if desired. The plate is ready for a bright green side dish. I recommend steamed broccoli.


A note about buying pork chops. As everyone knows, the death knell for pork is dry flavorless thin cuts. Another rule of thumb for any meat buying strategy is: the more frequently the meat was touched at any stage during processing, the more chance it had to get contaminated.
That's the reason we love Sam's Club as our butcher. We buy big quantities of unprocessed meat. We buy bulk ground beef that hasn't had that final "pretty" grind (especially important for the safety conscious) and in this case, we bought a whole pork loin. The price was less per pound and all we had to do was slice chops to our desired thickness and freeze them. This also yielded a pork loin tip roast (seen in the beets beets beets entry.) Better price, thicker cuts and a roast. We have a smug self-satisfaction when we see the exorbitant price of meat in grocery stores. Don't do it! Buy the 10Lbs log of beef for 20 bucks and then come home, put it into ten freezer bags and save yourself 20 bucks. (It's a lesser fat content too, can't beat that!)