A good pork tenderloin is something special. It’s perfect for a small dinner party or a romantic Saturday night at home with your sweetie. You can quickly season it with salt, pepper, and a few herbs before popping it in the oven and it will be delicious. If you plan ahead, you can marinate it overnight in soy sauce, chopped garlic, and grated ginger.
Either way, the prep is simple, but the trick is getting the temperature just right. You can cook it just 2 or 3 minutes too long and dryness will set in. If you do, all is not lost, because you can always make a quick sauce to compensate with the pan drippings and a bit of flour or cornstarch, but pork tenderloin is best enjoyed when it has cooked just a minute past the pinkness.
The obvious solution is a meat thermometer. Ideally, the pork is perfect when the internal temperature is between 140-160˚. Ideally. I only recently purchased a meat thermometer
Wrap your roast in strips of bacon, stick it in the oven at 400˚and leave it there until the bacon is well cooked and just starting to get crispy. When I used the meat thermometer, I found the tenderloin to still be frighteningly pink inside, even as the thermometer confirmed the proper temperature. The bacon has never lied.
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to eat meat more responsibly and avoid the factory-farmed stuff as much as possible. If you live in New York, you can easily find local, organic pork at many of the greenmarkets around the city (click to find one near you) or at Dicksons Farmstand Meats in Chelsea Market. For those beyond our little island, check out Eden Farms, as they have distributors all around the country.
Bacon-Wrapped Pork Tenderloin
Prep time: 45 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour
Makes 4-6 servings
Ingredients:
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 stick salted butter
- 4 rosemary sprigs
- 1 pork tenderloin, 1 1/2 to 2 lb.
- 4 slices of bacon
Method:
Preheat oven to 400˚ and pop the garlic cloves in the oven, wrapped in foil. Roast for 20 minutes or until the garlic is soft and pops out of its skin.
Create a rosemary compound butter by mixing the garlic with the stick of butter and the chopped leaves of 2 sprigs of rosemary. Combine everything together in a food processor (or just grab a fork and work out your low-lying hostility) and slather it all over your tenderloin.
Wrap the bacon slices around the buttered tenderloin and place it in a baking pan with the two remaining rosemary branches. Cook until the bacon starts to crisp, approximately 35 minutes.
In the unlikely event that you have leftovers, you should wrap the unsliced pork with the rosemary branches in foil. It will taste even better the next day. Slice it thinly while still cold and make yourself a sandwich to bring to work for lunch.
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Another great thing to do to pork is brine it. For a tenderloin all it takes is a few hours. I do one cup salt, I cup sugar, to about 5 cups cold water. I add bay leaves, garlic gloves, peppercorns, a squeezed orange and onion (skin on is fine). Combine it all and submerge the pork for a few hours. It really does keep the moisture in.
I’m with Lara – brine is nothing but beneficial to pork tenderloins and chops. Updating the post now with my earlier brined and grilled tenderloin recipe!