Oven-Roasted Rack of Pork

 Bret saw a rack of pork at Costco several weeks ago and brought it home to see what we could do with it.  It looks awfully fancy to me, what with the row of exposed ribs just waiting for those little toque blanche (little white chef hat thingies). 

Since we only had one rack we really couldn't make the "crown" as it needs a much larger rack for that. I began scouring the internet for a recipe that sounds good and is do-able in a home kitchen and stumbled across askchefdennis.com.

I found this fantastic recipe for Oven-Roasted Rack of Pork and the good part is - it calls for ingredients we always have on hand.   Great!  Here we go with our first rack of anything adventure.

We found the appropriate pan along with a rack and scrounged through our vegetables to see what we could roast along with it. The pan was oiled and rubbed, and the rack and popped it in the oven according to instructions.  The rub makes a delicious crust!

Except for a few of the ingredients (fresh garlic, no onion on Bret's request and no celery), we went strictly by the cooking instructions. 

I had some yellow squash and added it to the vegetables the last hour of cooking. (Squash cooks more quickly than the other vegetables.)   The result is an awesome pork rack and great roasted vegetables. 

Each chop is thick and juicy and the rack provides eight chops. We had the leftover chops for four different, delicious meals. 

We looked at each other after several bites of these pork chops and agreed that this is the best homemade meal we've ever made!  I'd pay big bucks at a restaurant for this. 

Oven-Roasted Rack of Pork is much easier than I ever thought and we'll definitely keep this in our menu rotation.  If you can't find the  pork racks at Costco (sometimes they're seasonal), ask your butcher to special order or try Central Market.

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Oven Roasted Rack of Pork

Yield: 8 -10

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 2 hours 30 minutes

Inactive Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours 50 minutes

Outstanding pork that would make a beautiful dish for a special occasion, as well as an every day meal!

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Ingredients

• 1, 8-bone center cut rack of pork
• Olive Oil
• Sea Salt
• Black Pepper
• Montreal Steak Seasoning
• 2 carrots, rough cut
• 1 small onion, rough cut and include skins
• 2 stalks of celery, rough cut
• 6 cloves garlic, peeled

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. In a roasting pan, add your rough cut vegetables.
3. Rinse the rack of pork well and pat dry.
4. Place rack fat side up, on top of cut veggies
5. Apply liberal amount of olive oil, rubbing it into the meat.
6. Sprinkle entire rack with sea salt, pepper and then with an extra coating of Montreal Steak Seasoning (use a good amount of Montreal seasoning, forming a light crust).
7. Place pan in preheated oven at 450 degrees for 15 minutes.
8. After 15 minutes reduce heat to 325 and continue to roast for approximately 2 hours or until internal temperature on the outside chops of the racks has reached 160 degrees for well done, 150 degrees for medium.  This will ensure the outside cuts of the pork are done while the center cuts are not cooked quite as much.
9. Remove the rack from the oven, placing on a cutting board and allow to rest for 10 minutes before slicing the meat.  This will allow all the juices to remain in the rack, rather than have them run all over the plate, making the meat dry.
10. While the rack is resting, place 2 cups of water in the roasting pan and place on the oven and with a spoon loosen all the baked-in meat scraps from the pan, making your pan gravy.
11. Strain out all of the vegetable pieces and any residue.
12. Cut the rack along the bones, making even portions of the pork; serve with your pan gravy and your favorite sides.

Notes

Tips and Stuff:  

Notes from Chef Dennis: When you remove a larger cut of meat from the oven it will continue to cook and the temperature of the meat will rise 10 more degrees.  Pork can be eaten at lower temperatures than 160 degrees, but if your entire party would like the meat very well done, you can continue to roast the rack until the center cuts are 155 degrees. This will make the end chops well done.

My Notes: After the roasting was finished, I lifted the rack out in order to let it rest, and instead of adding water to the vegetables and straining, I put a pat or two of butter with the vegetables and mixed them along with the small amount of juice the pork had generated while cooking.  It made perfect vegetables to serve with the pork.

We only ate two chops at a time, so I wrapped the rest of the rack in foil and when we were ready to eat the next two chops, I cut them away from the rack, put them in foil in a preheated oven at 325 degrees for 25-30 minutes (check after 20 minutes).  They didn't dry out, as the inside chops were less cooked than the outside chops from the original roasting.

Toques off to Chef Dennis for this recipe!

Nutrition Information:

Yield: 8 Serving Size: 1 chop
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 154Total Fat: 3gSaturated Fat: 1gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 2gCholesterol: 9mgSodium: 155mgCarbohydrates: 3gFiber: 1gSugar: 1gProtein: 3g

Nutrition Values are Approximate