Marinated Baked Pork Chops

The first week of my husband's crazy semester is just about coming to an end! This week has really flown by, so I anticipate that the next four months will go by in the blink of an eye. I've been on a mission to find "quick weeknight meals" and as usual, turned to one of my favorite sites: Allrecipes.com. I LOVE that site for so many reasons, but one of my favorite features is the ability to search for recipes by ingredients. We've been attempting to be as cautious as possible, financially-speaking, now that my husband stepped down to a part-time position, so I looked at the sale ads and noticed that pork chops were on sale this week. I searched on allrecipes.com, listing "pork chops" as my ingredient and was then able to sort the recipes, listing them in order of which received the highest ratings. This particular recipe had over 940 reviews and received 4 1/2 out of 5 stars. I was drawn to the simplicity of the preparation aspect of the recipe and that there really was very little to do during the cooking process. My husband (who is BY FAR the pickiest eater of the four of us) went back for seconds...he said he really enjoyed dinner :) I would make a few suggestions, however, to the original recipe. I tripled the sauce ingredients, allowing extra sauce to spoon over the rice that I served as one of my sides...we also had green beans. The recipe didn't really specify a particular type of pork chop, but my husband picked up a package of the assorted pork chops and I used the center cut pork loin chops. They were approximately 1/2 inch thick and I made five, since I knew my kids likely would opt to eat something else. The recipe suggests baking for an hour, but I baked mine for approximately 45 minutes and then broiled them for an additional 2 minutes and while I would make these again, I would cut back on the cooking time. I'm thinking 40 minutes would have been plenty of time, but obviously you'll want to make sure they're thoroughly cooked, so you may have to experiment a bit on your own. I'd definitely check them closer to 40 minutes, though! I'm going to list the recipe as originally written, but I would very much encourage you to take my suggestions into account--especially tripling the sauce ingredients and cutting back on the cooking time!

Marinated Baked Pork Chops

1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons ketchup
6 pork chops, trimmed

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

In a small bowl, thoroughly blend soy sauce, vegetable oil, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, brown sugar, and ketchup.

Place pork chops in a medium baking dish, and spread with 1/2 the sauce.

Bake pork chops 30 minutes in the preheated oven. Turn, and spread with remaining sauce. Continue baking 30 minutes, or until internal temperature of the chops has reached 160 degrees F (70 degrees C).

Source: Allrecipes.com