Pork Chop Hobo Dinners

I love Pinterest. I was looking at pins this weekend after I picked up my Bountiful Basket and I came across a pin for Grill Honey-Cumin BBQ Pork Packs. As luck would have it, the recipe called for corn, carrots, and potatoes, all of which I had sitting in my kitchen. I got the corn and carrots in my basket this week and had the red potatoes leftover from last week. I doubled the recipe and took the packs over to my in-laws' house for a cookout on their patio and was able to use up all of my corn, carrots, and potatoes. I love the sense of accomplishment I get when I use up produce from my basket! We also love hobo dinners, or foil packet dinners. Usually we put hamburger patties, shredded potatoes, and onions in them, so I was excited to try a new version with pork chops!

I had to adjust the original recipe a bit. It called for refrigerated cooked new potato wedges. I already had potatoes, I didn't see the point in buying more, especially precooked ones. I thought about precooking the potatoes I already had, but it seemed like an unnecessary extra step. We cook hobo dinners all the time with potatoes and they cook just fine, so I just sliced the potatoes thinly with my salad shooter and put them in the packets raw. The recipe also called for baby carrots, but I had regular carrots from my basket, so I just cut them into chunks about the same size as a baby carrot halved lengthwise. Instead of cutting each corn cob into 6 pieces, I broke them in 2 pieces each. Have you ever tried to cut a fresh cob of corn? Don't bother.

The last adjustment I made was how I cooked the packets. The recipe says to cook them on the grill, but my in-laws have a fire pit and when we have hobo dinners we always get hot coals going in the fire pit and cook them right in the fire. That's how we cooked these ones too, but if you don't have a fire pit I'm sure cooking them on the grill would work just as well!

As I mentioned earlier, I doubled the recipe. We cooked them all, but someone who reviewed the original recipe said that he or she makes extra packets and freezes them, then just thaws them before cooking them. I'm thinking that would be awesome for camping! You could make a few up and stick them in your freezer, then just throw them in the cooler or the fridge in your camper when you go camping. They'd be thawed by the time you're ready to cook them and all you'd have to do is throw them on the fire! And no mess to clean up! Pork chops are on sale at Smith's this week, so this week might be a good time to make a few for the freezer!

This is what the foil packets look like before you cook them.

And this is what comes out of the foil packets after you cook them!

Pork Chop Hobo Dinners

adapted from bettycrocker.com

1/2 c. barbecue sauce
1/4 c. honey
2 tsp. ground cumin
4 boneless pork loin chops, 3/4" to 1" thick
2 ears corn, broken in half
1 c. chopped carrots (about the size of baby carrots halved lengthwise)
2 c. thinly sliced potatoes
1 tsp. salt
heavy duty aluminum foil

Tear foil into 4 18x12" sheets. Spray with cooking spray. Mix barbecue sauce, honey, and cumin in small bowl. Place 1 pork chop, 1/2 ear of corn, 1/4 c. carrots, and 1/2 c. potatoes on bottom half of each foil sheet. Sprinkle with 1/4 tsp. salt and drizzle with 3 Tbs. of sauce. Fold top half of foil over food and seal edges, leaving a little room in the packet for expansion. Grill packets over medium heat for 15-20 minutes or place on hot coals for 20-30 minutes, turning once, until pork chops reach an internal temperature of 160 degrees. Cut open foil packets and serve!