Fried Pork Chop Recipe

Catawba public safety officer markets his

Catawba College News Service

On the outside, Catawba College Public Safety Officer Ralph Michael seems a tall, quiet, unassuming man with a ready smile, intent on doing his job. On the inside and when he’s off-duty, Ralph Michael is a man serious about his barbecue and dipping sauce — so serious that he’s started producing his own version for retail sale.

The retired Lexington police officer and native of North Carolina’s barbecue capital has been making his Ralph’s BBQ and Dipping Sauce for more than 25 years. But it was only through the prompting of his wife, Thelma, and the urging of his friends and relatives that he’s gotten down to business with it.

“I started making it to please myself and when other people liked it as well as I do, it really surprised me,” Michael says. “I originally starting making it because I was having to go to the store, buy some sauce, and then doctor that store-bought sauce to suit me. I came across my basic recipe and I started tweaking it, and over the years, I probably changed my recipe eight to 10 times. About six years ago, Thelma said, ‘That’s it. Leave it alone.’”

Ralph did leave his recipe alone, but he kept giving it away — jars of it to his wife’s family members at Christmas. One year, he decided he had been giving away jars of his sauce as gifts for too long and opted to give something else. He was met with plenty of protest from upset family members and their question: “Where’s the sauce?”

This past October, again at wife Thelma’s urging, he says, “I decided to stop dangling my feet in the water and just dive in.” He applied for his N.C. license to make and sell the sauce and he got a tax ID number and, he explains, “The rest is history.”

“Since I got set up in business, I stopped eyeballing it and started measuring my ingredients for consistency,” he explains. “It has become a science. I do it in two-gallon batches, usually four gallons at a time in two different pots. I’m in the process of getting a bottler, but I wanted to see if it would sell before I jumped out there with a bottler.”

Michael says he was wary of putting his sauce on the market because the market is so saturated with various sauces. Then he realized that his sauce wasn’t like all of the others on the market — his is vinegar-based.

From the Garden, Herb Crusted Pork Chops Recipe

This week I was walking around my vegetable garden, thinking about all of the big, beautiful tomatoes I’ll have in a few short weeks and dreaming about BLT sandwiches. Then I ventured over to the herb section and decided it was time to stop dreaming and start consuming. I have all of these beautiful herbs and haven’t been using them to their full potential. So I bent over and start plucking some of the sage leaves, a few sprigs of rosemary and a bundle of chives.

Looking at these gorgeous herbs sitting on my cutting board, I decided I wanted to try something new to me. Pork.

I realize that doesn’t sound very exciting but it’s one of the few meats I just don’t cook with outside of a slow cooker. Every piece of fried or baked pork I’ve ever made ended up like a piece of leather. Yet somehow, it turned out just beautiful and tender this time. Of course, it could be that it just tasted better because it was sitting alongside new potatoes with chives and butter, pork stuffing, butter braised cabbage and sweet buttered cornbread.

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