McCloud’s Baked Smothered Pork Chops (Made Easy With Cream Of Celery)

Baked Smothered Pork Chops are the perfect savory dinner, with juicy, tender chops that melt in your mouth. Oven-baked and seasoned to perfection, these pork chops are smothered in a rich, flavorful gravy that’s perfect for cozy Sunday nights.

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McCloud’s smothered pork chops

I can’t explain how much I love meat smothered in gravy! I think my grandma Viola Taylor and her husband Carlton McCloud are greatly responsible for that. I lived with them on and off as a teenager from 13 to 18 years old. 

And when I tell you Mr. McCloud, who did most of the cooking, made something smothered in gravy at least 2 times a week for dinner, THAT IS NO EXAGERRATION!!! He would cook everything from smothered turkey wings and smothered steak to smothered pork chops.

And sometimes he would fry the meat first then smother it in a gravy. Very much like these delicious smothered fried pork chops I made years ago that were inspired by him. I have a video on my YouTube channel for my famous SMOTHERED FRIED PORK CHOPS BELOW.  

Smothered Fried Pork Chops 2014 Video

I didn’t create a recipe for these smothered fried pork chops but I will very soon and when I do I’ll definitely post it but yea smothered food was definitely his thing and even though it felt like he made them every other day, I never got tired of them because they were so good! Lol!

Gravy methods

• Slurry – Ok so about the slurry. McCloud’s the one that’s responsible for teaching me how to make a slurry which is another method for creating gravy. You make a slurry by combining and stirring flour or cornstarch into a liquid like water or broth until it is dissolved and thickens into a gravy as it cooks.
• Roux – (Pronounced roo) After you fry and remove the meat from the skillet, you use that fat (oil) left in the skillet or add fat (butter) and combine it with flour and stir it over heat until it browns to the color of your liking. Then add a liquid like water or broth and allow it to simmer over low heat until it becomes a gravy. Usually, you’ll sprinkle in a few seasonings to flavor it up.
• Semi-roux – Now, some people do what I call a semi-roux because it’s really not a roux but similar because you’re adding flour to fat (or not) and then stirring in a liquid and letting it simmer until it thickens into a gravy. That’s how I made my gravy in the video above. The bottom line is we always made homemade gravy and never used the instant gravy, which is a powder that comes in a packet you can buy from the grocery store.

How to make different flavors of gravy

The question I get often from people new in the kitchen or cooking novices is how to make the gravy taste like the meat you’re making the gravy for. Obviously, if you’re making gravy for steak, for example, you want a beefy steak-flavored gravy.

Well, even if you just add flour or cornstarch and water to a skillet you just got done frying a steak in, the gravy is going to taste like steak. But to enhance the flavor of your gravy for each meat, this is simply what you do. 

• Gravy for Chicken – Want gravy for your fried or baked chicken legs or thighs, add chicken broth, chicken seasoning, or chicken flavor bouillon cubes to the gravy and it will turn it into a nice savory gravy that tastes like chicken.
• Gravy for Turkey – Same with turkey, use turkey broth to make your slurry or add it to your roux once it darkens for a rich turkey-flavored gravy. 
• Gravy for Steak – The same method applies to steak you will just use beef broth or beef bouillon cubes to give your gravy a steak flavor. Now with steak, you want more of a dark gravy so what you’ll do is stir your flour and fat (roux) for a longer period of time to achieve a darker color, then add your beef broth or beef bouillon cubes.
• Gravy for Pork chops – Now you may be asking, how do you give gravy a pork flavor because unlike chicken, turkey, and steak, there aren’t any pork broths out there to give your gravy a pork flavor. Well, even with those meats as stated earlier, if you add fat and flour to a skillet you just made fried meat in, the gravy will have the taste of that meat. And I recently found pork bouillon cubes made by Knorr in the store last week. So they have created a pork-flavored seasoning which you don’t see as often in stores.  
• Other flavors – Now say you want to add another flavor to your gravy besides the flavor of the meat you’re actually making it for, you can do what we’ll be doing for this recipe, by adding a soup. Like I want these chops to have a hint of celery flavor. You achieve that flavor you can either add a seasoning like celery salt or a soup like cream of celery. 

Slurry vs Roux

Another question I frequently get is what’s the best way to make gravy. So what I’ll do is give you the pros and cons to both methods of making gravy below even though it’s really based on preference. 

• Slurry Pros – It’s easy and takes less time. All you have to do is get a bowl, combine your thickening agent (flour or cornstarch) with water or broth and you’re all done, BAM BAM!!! This makes it a better option for newbies new to cooking because it’s hard to mess up as long as you use the right flour-to-liquid ratio.
• Slurry Cons – The con if any is that you’ll have to add things to it like BOQUET browning and seasoning if you want to darker it. This is usually if you’re making a slurry for pork chops that don’t brown even when you bake them! Smh!
• Roux Pros – You can easily achieve whatever color you want by letting it simmer over heat until it reaches your desired color. Lol!
• Roux Cons – It can be annoying because it can take a little while especially if you’re trying to achieve a darker color naturally without adding BOQUET or GRAVY MASTER. Ok back to the pork chops now.

Ingredients you’ll need:

Here are the ingredients for these tender, flavorful, smothered oven-baked pork chops. Everything will be listed from the type of pork chop I like to use for this recipe to the seasonings.

Also the vegetable add-ins, and ingredients for the gravy I create using a slurry. I will later get into alternatives for the ingredients where substitutions can be used and also get into why I like to use certain ingredients. 

• Meat: Thick Pork Chops
• Seasonings: Seasoning Salt, Chicken Bouillon Cube, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Italian seasoning, Thyme, Black Pepper, and Parsley Flakes
• Vegetables Add-ins: Onions and Minced Garlic
• Gravy: Chicken broth, All-Purpose Flour, Cream of Celery, Apple Cider Vinegar 
• Other: Butter

Thick vs thin cut pork chops

• Thick pork chops – Now personally, whenever I’m baking pork chops, I use pork chops on the thicker side. I’m not opposed to using thin-cut pork chops but thick pork chops are obviously for baking. I say that because they need to cook for a longer period of time to get tender. So go for thicker pork chops when you want to bake some and thinner pork chops for frying.
• Thin center-cut pork chops – You can use these as well for baking they just won’t take as long. I usually use these pork chops for frying because they take less than 15 minutes to fry which makes them perfect for a quick deep fry. 

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Vegetable add-ins & variations

• Mushrooms – As seen in the video above, mushrooms and pork chops make a perfect union and people obviously love the combination because you’ll find thousands of pork chop recipes using mushrooms. So if you’re looking to spice things up or just don’t like onions and looking for something to replace them with feel free to add mushrooms to the pork chops, they make a great couple. Lol!
• Celery – Now in this recipe I’m using cream of celery not just for a celery flavor but to thicken the gravy. Celery and pork chops are a match made in heaven. I rarely make pork chops without some kind of celery.
  If you don’t have any on hand and want more celery than what’s in the cream of celery WHICH AINT MUCH, go ahead and chop up some celery and add it to the dish.
• Green Peppers – I add green peppers to my pork chops sometimes. While you won’t find many pork chop recipes using green peppers, it taste great with them, give it a try.
• Hot peppers – And if you’re a lover of spicy food, to answer your question without you even asking it, yes you can definitely add hot peppers jalapenos, scotch bonnet something to spice up the pork chops if you like.

McCloud loved adding Vinegar

The reason I named this recipe after McCloud is because of the unique flavor of this dish. I have many smothered Porkchop recipes and I’ve eaten it a lot growing up but I knew when Mr McCloud made it because it always had a hint of vinegar in it.

He put Apple Cider vinegar in A LOT, by the way lol, but it really added a nice little tanginess to the pork chops and took them up a notch. So yea, that’s one of my adolescent memories of McCloud’s Baked Smothered Porkchops, that good ole vinegar flavor. 

Seasonings and alternatives

Ok so there are a few seasoning alternatives I want to give you in case you don’t have some of the seasonings listed. Ok so I’m going to give you some seasoning options for seasoning salt which is my personal favorite all-purpose seasoning.

• Adobo seasonings – It’s another great all-purpose seasoning you can use if you don’t have my favorite all-purpose seasoning, seasoning salt. Adobo has a wonderful unique flavor that seems to make everything taste better.
• Badia Sazon complete seasoning – This seasoning is the bomb.com! I don’t know why I don’t use it more often. It’s a good all-purpose seasoning with a wonderful unique flavor.
• Kosher Salt – And if all fails you can simply use salt… the original seasoning. Just use a smaller amount because salt is stronger per teaspoon than all purpose seasonings like Seasonings salt, Adobo, and Sazon.

If you don’t have garlic powder or minced garlic… 

• Garlic cloves – A lot of people prefer using fresh garlic. You can simply place them in a bowl with a little olive oil, warm them in a microwave, then mash them up. Or simply chop them up into fine pieces with a knife or blender.

How to make smothered pork chops

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Chop up a lot of onions.
3. Season the pork chops.
   
   

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4. Place the pork chops, onions, bouillon cube, and butter in the baking dish.
5. Combine the broth, flour, cream of celery, and vinegar for a slurry.
6. Add the slurry, then cover with aluminum foil.
   
   

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7. Bake until tender, then remove aluminum foil to brown the chops.
   
   

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Tips for best results:

• Stir the gravy: When you remove the aluminum foil, give the gravy a little stir just to remove any potential lumps in the gravy and to prevent the chops from sticking which can happen sometimes..
• Marinate your pork chops: If you have enough time and are able to, marinate the pork chops for 4-8 hours first or overnight! Meat always tastes better when you give the seasonings time to penetrate it. 

Can these be made ahead of time?

Definitely! Making them ahead of time will result in a better outcome because the seasoning will have had time to seep into the pores of the chops. You can even season them and place them in a Ziploc bag.

Tightly seal them and set them in the freezer for however long you want before making them. I do this often myself when I season my meats and something comes up (maybe an invite to dinner or something) and I’ll store them in the freezer for later.

I might not be in the mood for whatever I seasoned and prepared the next night and let them sit for weeks before having a taste for it again but when I do, all I have to do is thaw it out and then cook it because it’s already seasoned. 

What to serve with it:

• Egg Noodles: Gravy tastes amazingly delicious over egg noodles and make sure to butter and season them with a little minced garlic and seasoning salt.
• Mashed Potatoes: We all know gravy and mashed potatoes are married. Probably the best food couple in the world! Lol So I don’t need to explain why that’s a good combo.
• White Rice: White rice is probably the second-best combo with gravy after mashed potatoes. I like white rice the best and I like the 10 minute rice by ‘Success’. You can use brown, Spanish, or whatever rice you want.
• Sweet Buttery Corn: Something about the combo is sweet & buttery and savory makes dinner great. Make you some sweet corn with your smothered chops and you’ll love me for it. 
• Green Beans: Green beans go with everything. Easily one of my favorite vegetables but this combo may be a bit too acidic if you do like most folk do and add vinegar and garlic to ya green beans which are also both in this pork chop recipe. 
• Spinach: Spinach goes well with pork chops as well. I don’t know what it is, but spinach and pork chops are a perfect pairing. Probably the green veggies after green beans I eat with my pork chops the most.

Storage and reheating

• How to store them? In a Tupperware bowl, tightly sealed in the refrigerator. Just make sure as I always say, to place them in a cold area of your refrigerator so they stay fresh longer.
• How to freeze them? You can seal them in a ziploc back and freeze them if you want to save them for longer periods of time. Just make sure it’s sealed tightly to prevent freezer burn.
• How to reheat them? In a microwave, but a skillet will be better. You can also reheat them by wrapping them in aluminum foil and baking them.
• How to reheat the gravy? The gravy tends to turn into a lumpy gel, and microwaving it won’t loosen it up. So, to achieve the nice consistency the gravy had before storing it, stir in some broth and let it simmer over low heat in a skillet.

Frequently asked questions

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Alright that is it for now. I hope you all enjoy this recipe. Again, I will be posting more pork chop recipes soon so make sure you subscribe to stay updated on everything phillyjaycooking and follow me on social media to stay connected 

Enjoy, later!
Pbj~

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McCloud’s Baked Smothered Pork Chops (Made Easy With Cream Of Celery)

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star 5 from 1 review

• Author: Philly Boy Jay
• Prep Time: 20 Mins
• Cook Time: 2 Hrs
• Total Time: 2 Hr 20 Mins
• Yield: 4
• Category: Pork
• Method: Soul Food
• Cuisine: Soul Food

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Ingredients

• 2 Lbs Pork Chops
• 1 Cup Onions, finely chopped
• 3 Cups Chicken Broth
• 5 Tbs All-Purpose Flour
• 1 Tbs Butter
• 1/2 Cup Cream Of Celery (optional)
• 1/8 Cup Apple Cider Vinegar
• 2 Tsps Minced Garlic
• 1 Chicken Flavor Bouillon Cubes
• 1 Tbs Seasoning Salt
• 1 Tsp Garlic Powder
• 1 Tsp Onion Powder
• 1 Tsp Paprika
• 1 Tsp Parsley Flakes
• 1/2 Tsp Italian Seasoning
• 1/4 Tsp Thyme
• 1/4 Tsp Black Pepper

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Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place pork chops in a medium-sized bowl and season with all the seasoning and massage well.
3. Chop onions into thin pieces, then add the chops, onions, and butter to a baking dish.
4. Create a slurry by adding broth, flour, cream of celery, and vinegar to the same bowl you seasoned the pork chops in and stir well.
5. Add the slurry to the baking dish with the pork chops.
6. Cover with aluminum foil and place in oven.
7. Cook for an hour then remove the aluminum foil and stir the gravy well with a big spoon.
8. Continue cooking uncovered for another hour, then remove.

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