When you’re in the mood for comfort food, pork chops and scalloped potatoes are a dinner combination that everyone will love. But when they’re baked together, with layers of tender sliced potatoes and onions bubbling in an simple gravy, they turn into a pork chop and potato casserole that really is one of the easiest pork dinner recipes ever.

You briefly sear the pork chops for extra flavor, then add them to the covered casserole, where they stay moist and tender as they cook. It’s one of those crowd-pleasing meals that you can make for all kinds of occasions—dinner with the kids, a special weekend supper when your family comes over, or even to share with friends at a dinner party.

Ingredients for Pork Chops with Scalloped Potatoes

• Pork rib chops: The casserole gets a long bake in the oven, so the type of pork chop you choose is essential. Pork rib chops have more fat than loin chops, which helps them stay juicy once cooked. Buy chops that are sliced about 3/4-inch thick.
• Potatoes: Thinly sliced potatoes make a savory bed for the pork chops. Yukon Golds or russets are the best type of potatoes here; you’ll need about four to six medium potatoes to get 6 cups of sliced potatoes. A mandoline (an essential kitchen tool) makes thin, perfectly even slices.
• Onion: Use yellow, white or even sweet onions for this recipe. Slice the onion into thin rings to cook with the scalloped potatoes.
• Oil: You need just a little vegetable oil in the skillet to sear the pork chops. Browning meat in fat adds color and extra flavor.
• Chicken broth: Use a good quality store-bought or homemade chicken broth. It’s the base of a simple gravy that simmers the potatoes and onions.
• Butter: Use melted salted or unsalted butter to make the roux that thickens the gravy.
• Flour: Whisk all-purpose flour into the melted butter to make the roux.
• Seasonings: Season the pork chops simply with salt and pepper. Paprika and fresh parsley are optional seasonings you can use as a garnish for color and flavor.

Taste of Home

Cornbread dressing recipes are a staple of Southern holiday dinners, especially Thanksgiving. They’re also the subject of one of the more common cooking terminology debates. Dressing (that isn’t for a salad) looks a whole lot like stuffing, and the two are regularly confused by those who don’t understand why they’re called what they’re called. If you want to get technical about it, stuffing is a mixture that’s literally stuffed into the cavity of a bird before roasting. Dressing is stuffing, just baked in a pan instead of roasted inside a bird. The word dressing may have come into use during the Victorian era as a more elegant form of stuffing.

However, the real difference may be regional. That’s because there are Southern cooks who stuff birds with dressing before roasting them together, and non-Southern cooks who bake their stuffing recipes. The main dividing line appears to be whether the recipe is from the southeast United States or elsewhere.

So, how to make cornbread dressing? You’ll bake a crumbly batch of cornbread, then bake the crumbs a second time with additional ingredients. Other than waiting for the cornbread to cool, this Southern dressing recipe doesn’t take much time or effort to complete.

Southern Dressing Ingredients

Cornbread:

• All-purpose flour: Flour in traditional Southern cornbread is controversial, but this recipe uses it to make the bread a little less dense.
• Cornmeal: It wouldn’t be cornbread without cornmeal.
• Baking powder: There’s no yeast in this recipe, so baking powder is what helps the cornbread rise.
• Eggs: Eggs function as a binder here, holding the ingredients together, as well as adding structure. Use large eggs in this recipe, because two of them provide the right amount of “liquid” ingredient when combined with the buttermilk.
• Buttermilk: Buttermilk reacts with the baking powder to make the risen bread less dense, as well as making the flavor a bit richer. Baking powder doesn’t necessarily need buttermilk to activate, but the combination here makes the bread lighter and easier to crumble.

Dressing:

• Onion: Use a regular medium-sized onion here; it will mellow out when cooked and lend a slightly sweet yet still savory flavor to the final dish.
• Celery ribs: Like the onion, celery provides a lot of flavor (there’s a reason it’s part of mirepoix and the Cajun Holy Trinity), softening as it cooks in oil and again during the final round of baking.
• Eggs: The eggs here provide binding and structure like they did for the cornbread. Use large eggs only.
• Condensed cream of chicken soup: Use condensed soup here, because that helps thicken the dressing mixture. The chicken lends flavor, and the soup makes the final dish creamy.
• Poultry seasoning: Save yourself time and trouble by adding your favorite poultry seasoning for flavor instead of measuring out individual spices and herbs. This also complements the flavor of the chicken soup (and broth), as well as whatever bird you’re serving this dish with.
• Chicken broth: Without the broth, the dressing mixture would be too thick and dry. Broth adds more chicken flavor in addition to some much-needed moisture that allows for easier mixing and a moister result.

Taste of Home