Help Me Solve These Cooking Conundrums!

Hey blog readers! I've got two questions for you involving cooking techniques and tools. Hopefully, someone out there can help me out!

1. Cooking Meat in a Skillet
The other week I made this yummy parmesan-crusted pork recipe, but I had some issues getting it to become yummy. The pork had to be cooked in a skillet on the stovetop. No big deal, right?

Well, for me, cooking meat on the stovetop, unless it's ground meat, is always a challenge. The outside of the meat starts burning before the inside is even cooked through!

For this reason, I always chop up my chicken breasts before cooking them in a skillet, or I buy thin-sliced chicken breasts or chicken tenders.

But I don't think I should have to do that! Other people surely don't have this problem or the recipes wouldn't ask you to cook meat on the stovetop!

So what am I doing wrong? I placed four pork chops in the skillet at the same time. Should I have only done two at a time?

2. Metal Beaters that Rust
I didn't have this problem until we moved to our new home a few years ago. So, maybe this is a hard water issue, but I've been through two electric beaters already and had to get rid of the beaters because they got rusty!!

This happened after running the beaters through the dishwasher and after letting the beaters soak in water for a bit to make it easier to clean off caked-on batter.

I'm a little concerned about this because I would really like for this not to happen if I purchase a KitchenAid stand mixer. Is the only option just to handwash the beaters myself? In that case, I'd probably need two sets in order to make sure that one is strictly gluten-free. (Cleaning dishes in the dishwasher is a better way to clear away contaminants as opposed to handwashing in the sink.)

Has this problem happened to anyone else or is it just me? None of our utensils ever get this way, so I'm really not sure why it's just the beaters. Maybe it's the brand? Chefmate and Oster. Perhaps not so great?

Thanks for your help!!