Jamie Oliver's Goulash

I got a foodsaver for Christmas and I love it. For a while, I've been buying meat in bulk so that I'm prepared on days that I don't want to run to the grocery store for dinner. Course, it means planning that morning for dinner that night to allow defrosting time, but it's come in handy always having chicken breasts or pork chops on hand.

Monday was definitely a clean your fridge night. My method of late has been to find a couple of on hand ingredients -- in this case pork chops and bell peppers -- and search for a recipe that works with what I've got in the fridge, freezer, and pantry.

I chose Jamie Oliver's Spicy Pork and Pepper Goulash even though it called for pork shoulder when all I had on hand were pork chops (got one in the freezer now, though). I figured it was a decent substitute, especially in terms of making a three hour dish in a little less time, and I was right. So the only changes I really made were to trim and cut the chops into pieces and saute where the recipe calls for rendering the fat from the roast.

I cooked it for about an hour and a half, knowing that the three hour shoulder roast cook time might be overkill for my little chops, and the meat turned out nice and tender. Barring the fact that the flavors would obviously have more time to develop and that a shredded, tender roast is much different from chops, this was definitely a keeper dish either way. (And we ate it over egg noodles tossed with a little butter and parsley rather than the rice in this case.)

Here's the link to the recipe on Food Network, it can also be found in Oliver's Jamie At Home.