What a beautiful and tasty cut of meat. Center cut, bone-in pork chop. About 2-3″ thick, brined overnight, smoked for 4 hours, seared, and moved back to the Traeger until the internal temperature gets to 145F.
Start with good bone-in, pork loin chops…looks like a Porterhouse steak. Cut at 2-3″ thick, will weigh 18-24oz each. The ingredients in this post will make 4 chops.
Brine the chops for at least 8 hours. Start with 2 Cups boiling water and dissolve 1/2C Kosher salt and 1/2C granulated white sugar. Add hot slurry to about half a gallon of cold water and top with ice to make 1 gallon of brine. Add the chops, submerging them completely, and let sit for 8 hours or overnight in the refrigerator. You can’t brine them too long, but the more they sit in the brine, the more ham like your pork chop will be (which I don’t see a problem with). These went 24 hours in the brine.
About 5 hours before you want to eat, take the chops out of the brine, rinse in cold water, pat dry, and cover them in this rub: 1/4C brown sugar, 1t onion powder, 1t garlic powder, 1T chili powder, 2t Kosher salt, 1t cumin, 1t ground black pepper and 1T paprika.
Once rubbed, place on smoker at lowest level- I used 165F and supersmoke. Let smoke for 3-5 hours, or until internal temperature gets to 120F- don’t smoke beyond this point as the sear will add heat too. At this point, sear the chops over high heat for a couple of minutes/side. I use my gas Weber Genesis cranked up to about 700 degrees. Watch the chops closely, as the fat will start dripping over direct heat and create one heck of a fire! Get them good and seared, but not burned, before returning to the Smoker.
Once seared, turn up the heat on the Smoker to 225F and cook until the internal temperature gets to 145F. Lather on your favorite BBQ sauce for the final 20 minutes, cooking for 10 minutes on each side.
After you pull the chops, let rest for 10-15 minutes before diving in.
Decided to inject this bad boy before marinating. Middle picture shows smoked chop just about to get seared. Left picture shows seared chop going back on the smoker to ride up to 140F.
Nom nom!