Scared to fridge-Google!

A little research into the behavior of visitors to the Fridge-Googling blog has revealed that only around 50% of our guests actually make use of the special Fridge-Googling search engine.

Those that do are rewarded with an amazing array of recipes, tailored to the ingredients they have keyed in, and no doubt many a pork chop has been saved! But what of the others? My theories run as follows:

1) they are for some reason apprehensive about trying the radical new fridge-Googling technology :)
2) they are not hungry (that always does it)
3) their refrigerator is so tragically empty that not even Fridge-Googling can help
4) there is so much other interesting stuff to read on this site that they never get round to actually searching! (this last possibility I find the least likely!)

But I would like to encourage all the Fridge-non-Googlers that it is perfectly safe! Just type a list of ingredients (try to spell them right! You wouldn't believe how many people can't spell "tomato"!), add the word "recipe" for good measure, and click search. Your culinary sixth-sense should do the rest! Happy Fridge-Googling!

Pork-chops saved by fridge-Googling!

OK, so food supplies are running low. You look in your freezer (OK, so this would be freezer-Googling) and find a set of pork chops, like so.

Now you could just stick them in the oven for half an hour and eat the mediocre results with some mashed potato. Or you COULD fridge-Google for your dinner, and turn these humble pork chops into a veritable feast!

But first, surely that can't be ALL we have in the house! Another rummage around reveals:

• an onion
• a glass of some cheap red wine (from a carton, eugh!)

... as well as various spices (if you haven't got a good selection of those then not even fridge-Googling is going to help you!) Now I think we might be in business, even with this modest set of ingredients!

The next thing you do is enter these into the fridge-Googling search box (should be one round here somewhere!) - just type pork chops onion red wine and press enter or search.

Hey presto! A list of recipes (mostly!) with these ingredients in should appear! I found an interesting one with just these ingredients on Cooks.com! To be honest, I can't even remember where the link was, but it doesn't matter, because I am sure you can fridge-Google for it yourself!

It goes like this:

Season the pork chops with red paprika, salt and pepper (you do have those, right?!) so they look like the picture on the left! Now that is looking more appetizing already!

I used freshly-ground pepper - it tastes about a million times better.


Next, you need to fry these until they are brown on the outside. You are not frying them to death here, just making sure the taste of the spices gets activated, and the cooking process is begun.

Getting a bit more excited about those boring pork chops now?!


Now you just need to lay the pork chops in a suitable dish, add sliced onion, pour the glass of wine over, and add a couple of bay leaves for good measure. I added those, daring huh!?

That's the great thing about cooking, you are actually allowed to deviate from the recipe, it's not set in stone (except sometimes, when it is really important - knowing when you can improvise is the trick! :)

Doesn't that look awesome! And in case you are thinking I am some kind of genius gourmet chef, well, you are very wrong!


The last step is putting the whole lot in the oven at some medium temperature. You know, not too hot so it burns, not too cool so it takes forever and dries everything out. The exact temperature really isn't that important. Also, I think I covered the dish, so all the wine wouldn't completely evaporate, but get soaked up by all the ingredients.

And that is it! I took it out when I thought it was ready, and this was how it looked at the end!

As for how it tasted, well... my wife is still mentioning it more than a week later! Thanks to fridge-Googling, these pork chops were saved from a frying worse than death!