Easy Pork in Tomato Sauce Casserole Recipe

Whether you have pork chops, pork steaks, gammon steaks or even lomo, which is the Spanish word for slim rashers of pork, you will enjoy this easy pork in tomato sauce casserole recipe.

Simple to make, you can prepare it the night before, or inside an hour if you have the time, of serving it up on the table.

Very simple to make, I can assure you this dish is delicious and all the family will love it.

Don’t worry about having all the herbs and spices in your cupboards, because this recipe requires the minimum of ingredients.

What you will need, however is:

• Pork, 6 chops, steaks, lomo, slices, whatever you have in, or ham.
• 1 small tin of concentrated tomato paste, OR 1 normal sized tin of tomatoes, or any other tomato concentrate you have to hand.
• 1 beef stock cube, although you can easily change this chicken or ham, whatever is to hand.
• ½ pint cold water
• 1oz of flour
• Tablespoon of oil/melted butter for frying
• 1 onion, chopped up finely
• 1 bay leaf

I’m a great believer in mixing and matching. You don’t have to follow recipes to the letter, you can exchange ingredients for others you have to hand.

Stock cubes are a prime example. To me, they seldom actually taste of what you imagine they will - chicken, ham, beef etc. Instead you get a perfect mix of herbs and seasoning that will cover a multitude of dishes.

• Put your oven on to heat up to 325°F
• Fry your chopped onion in the oil for a few minutes to soften them, and then scoop them out and into a casserole dish.
• Fry your chops lightly until they change color.
• Remove from pan and add to casserole.
• Take the pan off the heat, and add more oil if necessary.
• Add your flour and using a wooden spoon, mix it into the remaining oil/ butter well. Return to heat and let it cook gently for a couple of minutes.
• Remove from heat and add water in gradually, mixing well at each addition, to avoid lumps appearing.
• Return to heat and bring slowly to boil, stirring all the time.
• Add the stock cube and the tomatoes, or tomato puree/paste or whatever you choose.
• Bring to boil again, stirring well to make sure stock cube has dissolved.
• Remove from heat and pour over onions and pork that are already sitting in the casserole dish.
• Add the bay leaf.
• Cover with lid and place in oven for 45 minutes to cook the pork thoroughly. Remove bay leaf before serving.
• Serve with potatoes and a green vegetable like peas.

I work odd hours and so prefer to cook meals the night before whenever possible. I wouldn’t normally recommend this for this dish, because as everyone knows, when you re-heat things in the oven, they tend to dry out, and that is that last thing you want to happen when making up this pork in tomato sauce casserole recipe.

The sauce is delicious! The sauce is possibly the best thing about this, and served with mashed potatoes is just to die for!

In the photos here, I only had 3 rations of lomo (which are slim pork chops without bones) left, so chopped them up and cooked them as above.

In the photo here you will see that I cooked the potatoes the night before, mashed them well, and added them to the casserole.

So, in the interests of making sure other people can eat when I am barely out of my bed and certainly not feeling like cooking, this dish, prepared by my good self the night before, now just needs re-heating in the oven, and serving.

I was married all those years and cooking for the family, and it never occurred to me until I retired that if you are cooking potatoes for mashing, then you should cut them up, when raw, into the smallest pieces possible.

Boiled potatoes normally take half an hour to cook in a pan of boiling, salted water.

If you cut them up into small chunks, you can cook them in about 15 minutes which saves a huge amount of power for cooking as well as time.

Then simply drain and mash them, add a knob of butter and some milk/cream, and mix well and you have the perfect mashed potatoes.

When you put mashed potatoes in a dish either for serving, or for reheating in the oven, you should break the surface with a fork, with gentle squiggles, as shown.

I hope you try and enjoy this easy pork in tomato sauce casserole recipe. Please comment below and tell me what you think.