Beer and Brown Sugar Pork Chops

 

I’ll just be honest: I don’t know a lot about beer. I know that I enjoy Corona with a couple of lime slices every once in a while, but that I much prefer fruity cold drinks to a bottle of beer. And I’m okay with my beer ignorance, really. I'll just be over here with my strawberry margarita.

My husband loves beer, though, and I knew he’d enjoy this recipe the instant it popped up in my Reader. The recipe calls for dark beer, so that’s exactly what I wrote on my grocery list. But then I got to the beer case and, well, I realized that I didn’t really know which beer to choose. There are exactly two beers that I know to be dark: Killian’s and Guinness. But since this recipe has an Asian spin, I didn’t know if those would be quite right. I finally settled on Jamaican Red Stripe Lager, figuring that the word “lager” meant that the beer would be dark.

Well…it wasn’t. But in the end, I really don’t think it mattered all that much. These pork chops were still intensely flavorful. The beer, soy sauce, and brown sugar in the marinade worked together to create a yeasty, salty, sweet flavor. As suspected, Joe loved these pork chops – and I didn’t think they were bad, either, despite the fact that they didn’t taste a bit like a strawberry margarita. :)

Beer and Brown Sugar Pork Chops
seen on Kitten with a Whisk and originally from Sam Zien

1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1/3 cup soy sauce
1 cup of dark beer
1 teaspoon minced garlic
4 boneless pork chops, about 3/4 inch thick

1. Mix brown sugar, ginger, soy sauce, beer, and garlic together. Place chops in an airtight container and pour marinade over it. Make sure chops are fully submerged and refrigerate overnight.

2. Heat grill to medium high heat and grill chops for 10 to 15 minutes. Turn chops once halfway through. Chops are done when they are white throughout and firm, and the internal temp is 160 degrees.