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Pan-broiled Chops
Prepare as for Broiled Chops. Heat frying pan hissing hot; place chops in pan. Do not grease pan. Sear one side and then the other, and continue turning every ten seconds, for five minutes if liked rare, and eight minutes if liked well done.
A dry-pan method that predates non-stick and holds up well: the constant turning it prescribes is exactly what current cooking science recommends. A few assumptions in the original need stating out loud.
- The hinge: no fat in the panPan-broiling means a bare, screaming-hot pan; the chop renders its own fat, which should be poured off as it collects. Leave it in and you are frying, which steams the surface and dulls the crust.
- "Hissing hot"Cast iron or heavy carbon steel, preheated 4-5 minutes over medium-high until a drop of water skitters and vanishes. Non-stick pans should not be taken to this temperature.
- Turn every ten secondsThis sounds fussy and is not. Frequent flipping keeps either face from overheating while the interior climbs steadily, giving a more even centre and, in modern tests, a faster cook than a single long sear per side.
- What "prepare as for broiled chops" meantTrim most of the outer fat, wipe the chops dry, and leave them unseasoned or lightly salted at the pan; season with salt and pepper after cooking, once the crust has formed.
- Assumed thicknessThe five- and eight-minute timings suggest a rib or loin chop of roughly three-quarters of an inch to an inch thick. Thin supermarket chops will be past well done in half that time; a two-inch chop wants finishing in a 375F oven.
- Pork versus lambPork was commonly cooked through in this period, though this recipe itself offers a rare timing. Whole-muscle pork is now safe at 145F internal with a three-minute rest, which leaves it faintly pink and far juicier. Lamb chops take the same treatment and are good at 130-135F.
- SmokeA dry pan at this heat will fill a modern kitchen quickly. Run the extractor before the chops go in, and expect to open a window.
- Resting and yieldRest the chops five minutes on a warm plate before serving. Two chops per person for rib chops, one for a thick loin chop.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and issued in 1907 by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer that, like Baker's and later Crisco, published a general household cookbook partly as advertising for its own products. That commercial origin explains why a book remembered for its chocolate chapters also carries a full run of plain meat cookery like this. Pan-broiling itself is an American kitchen term, distinguishing a dry hot pan with the fat poured off from ordinary frying in added fat, and it became common in the late nineteenth century.