Honey Baste for Pork or Chicken

Good eats tonight with the most wonderful basting sauce on our pork chops.


It is a recipe that I change up often.  The basic premise of it is fairly straight forward, but depending on what's in the fridge or cabinets, I change the ingredients.  Don't be afraid to do this, I understand it because I used to be scared, but what's the worse that can happen--you don't like it and have to start all over again?


I made the chops in Granny's electric skillet she left me and then at the very end, I basted the chops with this sauce:


Honey Blackberry Mustard Sauce (for pork or chicken)
1/4 c spicy brown mustard (use up to 1/2 c if you want a thinner sauce to go further)
1/2 c honey plus 1 T sugar (use up to 1 c honey if you want a thicker sauce)
3 T blackberry jelly plus 1 T orange marmalade
1 T mustard seed


Simply stir ingredients together and keep in a jar with lid in refrigerator.  Can also be used for a dipping sauce for pretzels or veggies, or added to potato salad or sandwiches.


How to substitute: If you would rather make your own mustard, you can use ground mustard and add vinegar.  The really fun thing would be to try different vinegar for different tastes--how about raspberry vinegar?  You can substitute any kind of jelly, jam, preserves or marmalade in this recipe--I used blackberry because it's what in season and what I just spend the last week doing.

Making blackberry jelly

And while I'm on the subject, what is the difference between preserves, jelly, jam, marmalade and conserves?


Here's the simple gist of it.  I'm sure it's more complicated than I'm about to make it, and some great chef or cook out there will want to correct me, but I'm working with a very simple mind here, so I will give you the Sheri run-down:  Preserves is a general term to describe any jelly, jam, conserve, etc.  Jelly is made with only fruit juice while jam has bits of fruit in it.  Conserves on the other hand is jelly with the whole fruit.  Marmalade is typically a tropical fruit (like oranges) and not quite so sweet. Simple enough, and all can be made with honey instead of sugar. 


Tonight's meal included freshly dug potatoes from our yard, cooked and seasoned with butter, parsley, salt and pepper along with green beans (from our yard), cooked in boiling water for a few minutes, then sauteed in olive oil with butter, salt, pepper, green onions and mustard seed. I love summer eating!