Zesty Spaghetti Sauce with Pork Loin Chops

The Feeling Of An Old Italian Grandma Cooking, In A Pot

This Zesty Spaghetti Sauce with Bone In Pork Chops is the kind of slow-simmered, Sunday dinner comfort that fills the whole house with the great smells of tender pork loin chops melted into a rich tomato sauce loaded with sweet onions, garlic, and oregano for that old school Italian flavor. A touch of tangy cherry peppers adds enough zing to give a little kick to the fall-off-the-bone pork.

I have told the story of how I worked in the deli at the Chicago grocery store chain Jewel-Osco many times. The deli shared the walk in cooler with the butcher department so we all got to be good friends.

The butchers knew I was young and poor so they would ALWAYS give me meat that was marked down but still good. This way I always had meat to cook with that didn’t break my budget.

I lived in a little attic apartment that had a two burner, apartment sized stove but I would COOK! One of the recipes I made often was spaghetti sauce on a Sunday and I would eat it throughout the week.

The butchers often gave me bone-in pork chops that didn’t sell and I used them for my “meat” sauce. That is how this zesty spaghetti with pork loin chops was born.

The Chops

The bone-in chops give SO much flavor to the sauce. The only downside of the chops is that you do sometimes get bits of the bone in the sauce, but you just have to look out for them.

They are typically pretty significant size pieces of the bone that falls aways from the meat. You can fish them out before serving, but still give a warning.

I will say that this sauce is so delicious that it may be worth losing or breaking a tooth over! [EDITOR ANDREW NOTE: Just kidding, don’t sue us!]

Not that you’ll need teeth because the pork chops gets SO tender in this recipe. You season them well and let them absorb all those flavors.

Then when they cook up in the tomato sauce, the acid from the tomatoes makes them fall apart tender.

Hoagie Spread

This hoagie spread by Cento is an ingredient I use a lot. I see it at a lot of grocery stores and it is available from their website and on Amazon.

I use it in my open faced Italian subs and I also use it on my cold cut combo flatbread. You can scroll the other recipes that use this ingredient.

I just love it. I am not sponsored by them, but I wish I was LOL!

Stack The Chops

I know that one step in the recipe will be confusing, which is how I cook the chops. This picture above sort of shows it.

I kind of try to make some surface area to sear the chops a little. I know there is a better way to do this, but remember, I was working with a two burner stove when I came up with this recipe so I had to make due with one pot.