The Best Pairing For Slow Cooker Pork Chops Is This Juicy Canned Fruit

Do you mix peaches with pork? Oddly, peaches are a well-known summer fruit for sweetening up a meat marinade, but they don't need to be fresh if you're cooking with them. You can buy preserved peaches at the grocery store, like those delicious Aldi's jarred peaches, to make a quick, sweet and savory dinner that is slow cooker pork chops. For advice on how to do this right, we spoke to chef Bill Peet, executive chef at the famous Tavern on the Green in New York City.

According to Peet, "Canned peaches can be great in a slow cooker with pork chops, but I would use yellow cling peaches as they are usually firmer and can take some cooking time." Cling peaches (sometimes called clingstone peaches) are peach varieties with flesh firmly attached to the pit at the center, making them tough to separate, unlike freestone peaches, which have flesh that comes right off the pit. Cling peaches often have stronger and sweeter flavors that make them great for canning.

As for why canned peaches rather than fresh, Peet explained, "I prefer canned peaches because they have good 'seasoning' or more flavor than a fresh peach that has to be ripe to have an optimum flavor." If you buy canned peaches, check the ingredients to see the "seasoning" they were canned with. Sometimes it's just syrup, while other times you might find a concentrate of other fruits like pears, which can add more flavor.

When making slow cooker pork chops with canned peaches, the type of meat matters too. Since we're skipping the oven to use another cooking tool that would allow for everything to be set up early and let the pork chops sit at low heat for several hours, you want a fatty cut of pork that can handle the long cooking time and stay tender. Bill Peet said, "I would use a blade pork chop in a slow cooker, usually a little fattier with more connective tissue that would not dry out like a leaner pork chop would. Cut thicker." Blade cuts fittingly come from the shoulder blade, and it's well marbled, bone-in pork; the bone keeps the meat tender, on top of adding extra flavoring.

Once you've assembled all the ingredients, Peet explained that you should season and sear the chops off at high heat. "Once the pork chops are seared off, remove the pork chops and add the liquid from the canned peaches to the pan and scrape all the browned bits from the pan with a wooden spoon," Peet said. Then, add the chops to the sauce and top with hearty cubes of canned peaches to cook on low heat for four to six hours. "Cook until tender when pierced with the tip of a knife," Peet said.