How to Grill Pork Chops

Those new to grilling often have a lot of questions, and that’s why we’re here to answer them! One common question we’ll answer today is “How Long Do I Cook Pork Chops on the Grill?”

But first, let us tell you how much we love pork chops. For awhile they were marketed as the “other white meat”, and many people have found that pork is an excellent alternative to beef and chicken. While grilling things like ribs and hamburgers on the grill still remain the most popular, we’ve really come to love and enjoy pork chops as well, and it’s exciting to see many people exploring new things and expanding their grilling horizons beyond just beef and chicken.

Pork chops are usually pretty slim cuts of meat, much more like a steak than say a full piece of pork such as tenderloin or shoulder, so you will grill it a bit differently than we do ribs and other slow cooked meats.

The first thing to do is properly season your pork chops and get your grill on as high as heat as possible. We recommend waiting until the last 4-5 minutes if you are planning on using barbecue sauce to add that because barbecue sauce can burn and burn quickly. So, if you’re looking to grill barbecue pork chops, we generally recommend against adding the sauce until the very last step. However, feel free to doctor up your chops in all of your favorite seasonings, a simple dry rub of brown sugar, salt, pepper, and garlic typically works pretty well.

Once the meat is seasoned and the grill is hot, you’re going to want to place the cuts onto the grill. How long you actually cook pork chops is going to depend on the thickness and size of the cuts – but a rule of thumb is about 4-6 minutes. You only want to flip the chops a maximum of three times while cooking. If you are using charcoal and your grill is not really hot, put on more coals and wait until it is hot. Otherwise cook time may turn into hours when it should really only take about 15 minutes at the most.

Once you’ve seared both sides and the meat appears to be close to done, you may want to do an internal temperature check. Your digital meat thermometer should read about 160 degrees. Any higher than that and it will likely be too overcooked, though less than 155 degrees is under-cooked and highly not recommended.

Once the meat is cooked most of the way through, if you plan on using a sauce to BBQ your pork chops, you can then brush it on for the last few minutes of grilling, giving each side about two to three minutes before transferring it off the grill.

And that’s really about it. Learning how to grill barbecue pork chops is pretty easy. All you need to do is serve it up with some of your favorite side dishes, such as grilled asparagus or corn.

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