Grilled Pork Chops with Double Espresso Mop Sauce
I like to think of myself as a sporadic coffee drinker. I go through phases where I’ll have a few ice coffees during the summer but for the most part, my coffee intake consists of an after dinner double espresso or a scoop of coffee heath bar ice cream (sometimes single espresso and double scoop).
I don’t need the caffeine fix, I just truly love the roasted, bitter flavor of espresso. Similarly to the way the Spanish incorporate bitter chocolate into their rich mole’ sauce, I set out to infuse a barbecue sauce with the pungent flavors of dark roasted espresso beans.
The barista at Starbucks thought I was a wacko when I approached him and ordered six shots of espresso in one cup. Little did he know, I wasn’t pulling an all-nighter, but rather basting a massive pork loin roast with my java. There’s no real basic recipe for barbecue sauce.
It’s not like you have to start with one of Escoffier’s fundamental mother sauces in order to produce a bottle of sticky, sweet muck.
There’s no real science to it but rather a few basic principals. You need tang from vinegar, and a balance of sweet and heat.
You can get those flavors from a million different ingredients from all different cultures. Even though I wanted my espresso to be the star of the show, I used an additional 25 ingredients to make my jet black mop sauce.
I started off with a base of onion, jalapeno, and garlic, that I sauteed in some butter in a heavy bottomed pan. Then I started to layer all of the other ingredients. Dried spices came first (cayenne powder, all spice, smoked paprika), and then the vinegars (apple cider vinegar and aged Balsamic).
Then I added some traditional barbecue sauce ingredients like ketchup, molasses, Worcheshire sauce, and Soy sauce, followed by some not so typical ingredients like Cognac, Pepsi cola, Korean Black Bean paste, sesame oil, raisins, 62% Cacao dark chocolate, and of course my six shots of espresso.
I let all of the flavors come together and reduce for over an hour until the sauce was dark and sticky. I blended it with my boat motor tool and added the last of the espresso before I transferred it to a stainless steel tub. I pulled out this rubbery mop that I picked up the other day that’s great for sloshing sticky sauces onto grilling meats and tossed it into the espresso barbecue sauce.
I had this monstrous rack of half a dozen pork chops that I simply seasoned with salt and cracked black pepper, because once it hits the grill it would get dowsed with flavor. The tricky part about grilling a piece of pork this big is preventing flare ups because there is so much excess pork fat around the bones that constantly drips into the flames. I really had to keep an eye on it, moving it around to different parts of the grill and trying to keep the lid closed for the most part.
This is where a meat thermometer really comes in handy because a big charred piece of pork looks cooked to a crisp on the outside but the center could be still raw. Once I knew it only had about ten minutes left, I started painting my sauce on the rack. The sugars in the sauce made a sticky, sweet crust on the outside of the meat and the smoke coming out of the grill started smelling like someone was firing up an expensive espresso machine.
While the pork was resting, I glazed some whole carrots by sauteing them in butter and a little bit of water. As the carrots cook, the water reduces and the butter glistens the orange stalks. When I cut into the roast, the meat was juicy and pink with a beautiful espresso crust. I opened a bottle of 2007 Quivera Zinfandel from Dry Creek Valley, California. Red Zinfandel is a great wine to pair with anything off the grill because of its jammy, peppery character.
This Zin was loaded with fruits like black cherries and plums and it had an Asian spice kick to it in the finish. The fruit wasn’t too overpowering like some Zin’s can be. This bottle was much more balanced and elegant, which was great because it allowed for the espresso nuances to shine through in the sauce. I also liked the picture of the wild boar on the label because I have a minor pig obsession even though I was about to devour one.
