Teriyaki Pork Chops

Tonight I'm trying to put together something a bit Chinese. I got a package of boneless pork chops like I usually do, but instead of shake'n baking it up, I coated them with Teriyaki and Soy and tossed them in the oven. I'm also going to be making a vegetable stir fry, and tomato and basil pasta dish, but let's look at how I put it together!

First step: Preheat the oven to 350°F. For the pork, I got a sandwich sized zip lock bag I had and put in a swig of Soy Sauce.. about.. two table spoons. On top of that, I put in a couple good squeezes of Teriyaki Sauce I had, about.. 30 mL, maybe a bit more, and squished the two up. After rinsing the pork chops off, I tossed them one at a time into the bag and coated them with the mixture. Than I took them out and immediately put them on my foil lined cookie sheet. They were well covered, as seen in the picture, and thanks to all the Shake'n Bake I've done I know I can cook them for 45 mins.

At about twenty minutes in, I noticed that the coating for the pork was running off a bit. What I did was spread some more Teriyaki sauce over them and put it back in the oven.

The Tomato Basil Sauce pasta dish was really easy. I used Lipton's Side Kicks for them, so it's pretty much all done for me. Yes, that is a lazy way to make pasta, but I'm not used to making sauces yet from scratch and I didn't want to go through the hassle of it. I did use two packages, though. Something I've noticed with Side Kicks dishes is that since I'm making two packages at once, I need to decrease the overall water used. Since these call for two and a quarter cups of water each, I only used about three and a half cups of water total.

The Stir-Fry! That was fun to make. I had left over chopped green peppers and onion from when I made tacos last night and started frying them in some oil on medium in my fry-pan. What I sneakily did was buy some pre-sliced stir-fry vegetables with carrot, green beens and broccoli. I also cut up some fresh green bell pepper into slices and threw them in half way through so they would stay more crisp. Throughout cooking the stir fry, I added about half a cup of water, about 30 mL, or roughly an eighth of a cup of soy sauce, and a generic stir fry seasoning mix I picked up from the grocery store. Overall, cooking time for the stir fry was at least ten minutes, probably more like fifteen. The vegetables were all cooked. The chopped onion was browning, and the carrots, green beans, and broccoli were all crisp yet soft.

So in the end, the pork was a bit of experiment in that I was coating them by my custom design. I could have used a more 'stick to' kind of sauce, or something.. maybe even add flour to the mix and than coat them.. not MUCH mind you.. it will have to be something for me to try out. The pasta dish was straight-forward enough, my only change was to decrease the water, and the selection was a nice tasting change of flavour. The stir-fry, mostly my concoction, was really fun to make! I'd like to try a teriyaki flavoured stir fry. Maybe I could even make a meal out of it and get stir-fry cut strips of beef with it, too!