Eat Something Good

Despite my inability to cook pork chops, I can cook up a decent pork tenderloin.  In the past, I’ve used a pre-mixed dry rub.  It was red in color; maybe a little brown.  It had a southern theme to it.  Perhaps even southwestern.  Unfortunately, I threw out the empty container a long time ago.  Instead of going into the details of the dry rub, I’ll just give you the gist.  Basically, it was good.  Not great, but good.  And there’s plenty of salt in it to thoroughly season the tenderloin.  Maybe even throughout the whole thing.  So the first time I made a pork tenderloin and several times thereafter, I used the aforementioned dry rub.  Then one time, Steve had the bright idea to pour maple syrup over the cooked  bacon wrapped pork tenderloin.  That was good.  Steve’s mom loved it.  As much as I’ve enjoyed the previous recipes, I was excited but not too excited by the latest recipe.  The reason why I wasn’t too excited is because I’m a little played out on the red wine thing in foods.  Sometimes I want, for instance, a basic beef stew.  Simple, familiar flavors, which to me, is like “Mom’s” cooking.  Of course not my mom and not a lot of moms but some.  But when I want the red wine, it’s a very welcome guest.

Here’s what I did.  And it was way easy by the way.  Minimal chopping, not even mincing or anything time consuming and brain energy sucking’ing.  The recipe calls for the pork tenderloins to be washed under cold water then dried.  I liked that.  It made me feel clean’ish (but I’m 100% certain it was neither clean nor bacteria free.)  So here we go.  To a pan, I used the everyday pan, I added a little oil (canola for me) & butter.  As the recipe states, let the butter bubble up a bit.  I used a little too much oil and the bubbling did not occur as much as I imagined it would.  Despite that, I knew that it was hot.  Before I threw the tenderloin into the pan, I seasoned it with s & p.  Then I added, 3 cloves of garlic (recipe called for 2), 1  1/2 ‘ish teaspoon dried thyme (recipe called for fresh sprigs but didn’t have any on hand.)  I browned the pork tenderloin on all sides with the garlic & thyme in the pan.  Then I added chopped shallots, swirled it around for like 30 seconds.  Then I cranked up the heat to high, added 1/2 cup of red wine (the recipe called for 1/3) and got to scraping off some residue.  I didn’t get much so it was a snap.  Finally, you turn the stove down as far as possible.  I mean low, real low.  Put a cover on it and let it do it’s thing for about 35-40 mintues (recipe called for 45 minutes.)  Oh, don’t forget to turn the meat over half way through.  When you do, you’ll see how beautifully colored it is.  It was very pleasing to the eye.  And finally again, throw the cooked pork tenderloins onto whatever you normally cut on and then to the pan, add a teency bit of water and reduce the heck out of it.  If you heat it to death like I did, you’ll get more of a thick, oily sauce (sounds bad but wasn’t).   But I recommend that you ease up on the heat and serve it thinner than a gravy but thicker a stock or broth.  I know there’s a huge leap there but I can’t think of a good comparison at the moment.

pan-roasted pork tenderloin

To serve, I sliced up the pork tenderloin into little medallions and served the reduced red wine sauce on top.  On the side, I made Uncle Bens rice with chicken stock, water, s & p.  For the veggies, we had green beans.  Canned.  I asked Steve what kind he thought it was.  He guessed Shop Rite which was weird because it was Shop Rite brand.  But it wasn’t the only brand I used.  I also added a can of Green Giant.  You know, the luxury canned green bean.  First I emptied the Green Giant one into a sauce pan and noted that the cuts green beans were mostly intact and of a good color.  Then I opened up the Shop Rite canned green beans and guess what?  They were almost exactly the same.  Makes ya think, doesn’t it?

The verdict.  Thumbs up from both of us.  I really enjoyed the meat.  It was tender (not too tender) and definitely nowhere near dry.  Even the pork tenderloin ends were moist and very edible.  I enjoyed the red wine sauce mostly because of the shallots and thyme.  Steve wants this one in the rotation but if I make it again, I’m going to use fresh thyme instead.  It will completely enhance the flavor.  I’m absolutely certain of that.  And I don’t feel that way about all herbs.  I’ll save that for another blog.  And lastly, I must mention.  I like washed my hands no less than six times while preparing dinner.  There’s always that fear of poisoning Steve (and others) and in this case, giving them trichinosis (sp?)  Sorry to leave you on an unpleasant type note.  I can’t think of a good joke so I’ll just say, Take care guys, and as always, Eat Something Good

Recipe: Pan-Roasted Pork tenderloin from Cooks.com