In an easy homemade cider sauce
Our recipe for pork with apples and onions in a simple homemade cider sauce is a delicious way to use all the warm flavors of fall in a savory dinner dish. Apples, onions and pork are a classic pairing and our homemade cider sauce adds a special sweet and savory touch to the trio of flavors.
You can have this pork, apples and onion dinner on the table in less than 30 minutes and the whole meal uses only one skillet.
Fall is apple picking time
It’s fall again in New England and for me that means it’s time to go apple picking. I offer more thoughts about my time spent in the orchards in Apple Picking Time. It’s not the apples that call me, I go to the orchard for the picking. I make an art of it.
Very often, the biggest apples are at the top of the trees. The easy to reach apples on lower branches get picked over pretty quickly. So, if you want the best, you have to work to get them. No, I’m not climbing trees. There is a long handled tool with a metal basket on the end that has claw like metal fingers to wrap around the top of the apple. Then you carefully nudge them from the stem into the basket. It’s a single minded task that puts my mind to rest about anything other than getting that apple in my bag. 🍎
Apple picking is a great family outing
I am finding more and more apple orchards that are no longer just for picking apples. Orchards have been transformed into a wonderland of fall fun for the whole family.
A couple of decades ago, orchard owners started to realize that apple sales alone were not going to be able to sustain the farm and the farmer much longer. The often magnificent tracts of land that are home to the orchards come with a big price tag when it comes to property taxes. I was seeing orchards that had been family owned for generations, put up for sale because they just couldn’t make ends meet.
But the human spirit is fierce when put to the test!
Apple growers found a way to thrive. Pumpkins, hayrides, games for children, entertainment, caramel apples, cider, maple syrup, honey and all kinds of great food (like homemade cider donuts!) turned the tide. Now families flock to enjoy a wonderful autumn outing at the orchard. Just goes to show, looking at a problem from a different angle can make all the difference. Not only have apple growers been able to stay afloat, but a good old fashioned day in nature has become a yearly event for many families.
Picking apples, bringing them home and eating them might be the only time in a kid’s life that they see where their food is coming from. They are able to participate in the harvest and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Apple pie anyone?
Cooking with your fresh apples
Of course, after I pick I have to figure out what I am going to do with all the apples. Homemade apple sauce is always a good way to use some apples. Warm homemade applesauce is a real taste treat delight. Using warm applesauce as a topping for vanilla ice cream is off the charts good. Want to try making your own? We have a recipe for that. HOMEMADE APPLESAUCE is easier to make than you may think and you can add your own flavorings and sweeteners. You can choose natural health conscious ones, or not 😊.
Our applesauce recipe leans into natural ingredients. It calls for a bit of maple syrup to sweeten it up and a touch of fresh ginger (Using Ginger fresh and ground) to spark up the flavor. But no matter what you decide to use to flavor or sweeten your applesauce our recipe will show you the “how to” of making your own.
Apples are not for desserts alone
I love using fruit in my savory dishes. It’s kind of an unexpected twist. And fruit is just as good for you as vegetables in a recipe.
Recently my daughter-in-law Cindy, my granddaughter Danielle and I went apple picking. I came home with a big bag full of apples and decided to make a savory dinner recipe.
After some trial and error, I came up with this apples, onions and pork recipe with a homemade cider sauce. It’s really worth trying. The sauce is like a savory slightly sweet apple caramel sauce. It’s so so good. Especially with pork.
This is WHAT YOU NEED:
| 2-4 pork chops about 1 inch thick see note about pork below |
| 1 large onion yellow, sweet or white |
| 3 tablespoons butter |
| 3 good size apples any kind |
| 2 tablespoons real maple syrup |
| FOR THE SAUCE |
| I cup real apple cider or apple juice if cider is out of season |
| 1 teaspoon salt |
| 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon |
| 1 tablespoon corn starch |
| olive oil for searing the pork |
About the ingredients
Pork
The cut of the pork you use in this recipe is entirely up to you. Bone-in chops, ribs, boneless pork sliced as chops or cubed up, they all work.
You can use as much pork as will fit in the skillet you are using, or as little as you need. If you are using a cut thinner than 1 inch thick or boneless pork chopped into cubes it will take less time to cook so adjust the cook time. Just sear the pork briefly in the skillet to get it browned. The pork is added back to the skillet later to finish cooking.
Apples
Any apples! Use what you have. Use what you like.
The real stuff is the best stuff
There are some ingredients that have no good substitution and real cider and real maple syrup are on that list.
Cider
Freshly pressed apple cider is made during apple harvesting months. The apples are “pressed” to extract the apple’s juice. Each type of apple has a little different flavor from others and during the apple harvesting season not all apples ripen at the same time. So pressed cider will taste a little different depending on what apples are being used. You don’t really notice any difference in processed store bought cider, but if you are getting cider pressed at the orchard you can taste the difference. I found that out by drinking a lot of cider. 😋
Real pressed cider is found in the produce section. It needs to be kept cold so it doesn’t ferment. A single serving bottle will be enough for this recipe, but if you get a larger bottle it is a delicious beverage on it’s own. And if you want a real treat have it with vanilla ice cream in an APPLE CIDER FRAPPE.
Real cider is not usually available all year. You can use apple juice if you can’t get or don’t have cider, but the sauce is not going to have the rich deep caramel like flavor or texture that you get from cider.
Maple syrup
Real maple syrup is a 100% natural product. It comes from maple trees, and there is nothing added. Those other bottled syrups are maple flavored corn syrup.
Real maple syrup is a bit pricey. That’s because it is harvested at natures whim and it’s a laborious task to make it. It’s a really interesting process. If you want to see how a New England family harvests sap and turns it into syrup, the Eldridge’s let us get a close look into what it takes in our post Making Maple Syrup.
A little goes a long way when you are cooking with real maple syrup. As long as it is refrigerated after opening, it lasts a long time. It’s well worth the money in my book.
Using corn starch as a thickener
We are using corn starch as a thickening agent for our sauce. Did you notice that we put the cider in a bottle? Shaking corn starch with a COLD liquid (cold cider in this case) is the easiest way to emulsify it before using it in your cooking.
Emulsify in this case means to fully dissolve the corn starch in the liquid. Once the corn starch is fully emulsified, when you add it to a hot liquid it won’t lump or clump.
Cold liquid and flour shaken up in a bottle or jar is a good way to make a meat gravy that doesn’t have lumps also. Both corn starch and flour are used to thicken a sauce or gravy. Most commonly corn starch is used for sauces and flour for meat gravies.
This is WHAT TO DO:
Prepare the ingredients
Core and slice the apples 1/2 inch thick wedges. You don’t need to peel the skin off the apple. It adds a little bit of color and nutrition to the finished dish.
Slice the onion. I cut the onions for this dish in slices cut lengthwise and they are also about 1/2 in thick. Cutting the slices lengthwise helps their structure to be maintained rather than melt into the sauce. Want more about slicing? Check out: Slice Dice Mince and Chop.
Mix the cider, corn starch, cinnamon and salt together. Shaking it all up in a bottle or jar is the easiest way. Don’t add the maple syrup to the cider mix. To get the best flavor we will add it to the sauce later.
Time to start cooking
Heat a 12 inch skillet on medium high heat. We are going to sear the pork chops to lock in the juices and keep them moist.
Sear the pork chops
We need a hot skillet to sear. The high heat will get the chops brown and crusty on the outside. At lower temperatures they will steam, which sacrifices flavor and tenderness.
Preheating your skillet is essential for searing. If you want to know that your skillet is hot enough, a single drop of water will tell you. The drop of water will sizzle and quickly evaporate when your skillet is hot. Caution: make sure the water is fully evaporated before you add the oil. Mixing water with hot oil is extremely dangerous.
When the skillet is hot, add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the skillet (about 3 tablespoons) and quickly add the pork. You will hear the sizzle of the sear as soon as the chops hit the skillet. If you are not sure the skillet is hot enough, instead of adding the whole chop, just touch the side of the chop to the bottom of the skillet. If it starts to sizzle you are ready to go.
When the chops are seared to a golden brown on one side, turn them and sear the other side. For the one inch chops we used, with the bone in, it took 2 minutes to get the sear you see in the picture. The other side only took 1 minute. You are not fully cooking the chops, just searing them at this point.
Take the skillet off the heat when you are done searing, remove the chops and put them close by. You will be adding them back in to finish cooking in just a few minutes.
There is flavor in the skillet already
When you are done searing the pork, the skillet will have black speckles and some remaining browning from the chops on the bottom. There’s a goldmine of flavor in that skillet for your sauce. Don’t drain or clean the skillet before adding the butter and onions.
After you have seared the pork you are left with a ton of flavor in the skillet. The term used for this stuck on stuff and specks is a “fond”. The fond is an important source of flavor and coloring in cooking that can’t be replicated with anything else. The magic happens later when the fond dissolves into a liquid you have introduced.
Brown the onions
Move your skillet back onto the burner, turn the heat down to medium and add the butter and onions. Sauté the onions until they are slightly browned. It should take about 3 minutes.
You want the onions to get to this stage of brown.
Add the apples and cider sauce
Add the apples and the cider sauce to the onions while still on medium heat. Let the sauce come to a boil. Do not put a cover on the skillet. Boil the sauce with the apples for about 3 minutes to cook the apples and thicken the sauce. Stir the sauce frequently while it is boiling.
Add the apples and the cider sauce to the cooked onions and bring the sauce to a boil.
As the sauce boils the corn starch will thicken the sauce and the apples will get tender.
Stir frequently while the sauce is boiling so everything cooks evenly. It will take about 3 minutes.
Now it’s time to add the maple syrup
After you have boiled the apples and onions and they are tender, mix in the maple syrup.
Spoon out the apples and onions
Here are our cooked apples and onions in our thickened cider sauce. Yum.
Scoop out the apples and onions so we can finish cooking the pork.
Add the pork to the sauce
After the onions and apples are out of the skillet add the pork back in and let it simmer in the sauce until it is cooked through. It will take 10-15 minutes depending on the thickness of the pork. It’s okay to have a slight bit of pink in the meat. On the other hand, overcooked pork will get tough, dry and tasteless.
When the pork is cooked, take it out of the sauce and let it rest for about 5 minutes.
Pour the cider sauce that is left in the skillet into a measuring cup or small pitcher for the table so you can pour it over the pork, apples and onions as you would a gravy. Serve the apples and onions as a bed for your pork or a topping for the pork or on the side.
Your sauce
This sauce is absolutely delicious. The apples, onions and pork are touched with the flavor of cider, cinnamon and maple syrup. It is like a savory caramel sauce. But there is no sugar, only natural sweetness from the ingredients.
Serve
PORK APPLES AND ONIONS
Ingredients
- 4 pork chops about 1 inch thick -any cut of pork is okay. You can also used chopped cubes of boneless pork.
- 3 apples large apples any kind
- 1 large onion yellow, sweet or white
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup all natural real maple syrup
- olive oil for frying pork chops
For cider sauce
- 1 cup apple cider
- 1 teaspoons salt
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon corn starch
Instructions
Prepare Ingredients
- Salt the pork.
- Core the apples and then cut into ½ inch wedges.
- Slice the onion lengthwise into ½ inch slices.
- Mix the cider, salt, corn starch and cinnamon together until the corn starch dissolves. Shaking it all together in a covered bottle or jar works great for this. Don't add the maple syrup to the sauce yet.
Cooking Instructions
- Put a 12 inch skillet on medium high heat and let it get hot, then add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the skillet. Get the meat in the pan right away so the oil doesn't burn.
- Add the pork chops to the hot skillet to sear (not cook through). My 1 inch pork chops browed well with 2 minutes on one side, and 1 minute on the other side. We are not fully cooking it. The pork will go back into the skillet to finish cooking in the sauce after the apples and onions are done.
- When seared, move the skillet off the heat. Take the meat out of the skillet and put aside.
- Turn the burner down to medium and put the skillet back on the heat. Add the butter and onions. Sauté until the onions are softened and somewhat browned. It should take 3 minutes or less. See picture in post.
- Still on medium heat, add the cider sauce and apples. Boil for 3 minutes, uncovered, stirring frequently. The sauce will start getting thicker and the apples will get tender.
- Take the skillet off the heat and mix in the maple syrup.
- Scoop out the apples and onions and put them aside. Turn the heat down to simmer and add the seared pork back into the skillet.
- Simmer the pork in the sauce, uncovered for 10-15 minutes until it is cooked through. Don't overcook.
- Remove pork chops from the skillet and And let them rest for about 5 minutes before serving.
- Pour the sauce into a measuring cup or small pitcher to use as you would a gravy.