If you had told me two weeks ago that I would be seasoning my meats with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, I would have called you a lunatic… Yet, here we are.
What would drive a man to such outlandish, nonsensical cookery? Youtube, duh…I’m subscribed to Townsends channel, where they “explore the 18th century lifestyle“.
This video came up on my feed, so I gave it a watch…
When he says it was the best pork chop he’s ever had, well, he was just so enthusiastic about it I had to see what he was on about. So, I mixed up a batch in rough proportions described by the video:
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 1/2 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
- 6 tsp kosher salt
I gave it a try and decided to put in another couple teaspoons of salt. I also ground up an anise pod and added maybe 1/4 of the resulting powder. The result was an unexpectedly nice balance of salty, savory, a little sweet, and spice from the cloves and anise, but am I really supposed to put this stuff on MEAT? ACTUAL MEAT? CLOVES AND NUTMEG ON MEAT?
I had some pork chops in the fridge, so I let them come up to room temp, slathered them with kitchen pepper in rough amounts as demonstrated in the video, and slapped them on my cast iron with a little ghee for lubrication. Made a pan sauce with the leavings from some chicken stock and white wine, whipped up some instant mashed potatoes (don’t judge me – they’re easy and delicious), and piled it all up on a plate with some applesauce on top.
I’ll be damned if that wasn’t one of the best pork chops I’ve ever had. All of the flavors that I expected to work against themselves on meat actually go together really well. This was an unexpected treat. I have since done up a couple of ribeyes with Kitchen Pepper to great success.