pork loin | nate elston

Perhaps my favorite way to have pork is like this, grilled and rubbed with dijon mustard and a rosemary/garlic concoction. It was the first way I had cooked pork in out of my Dutch tradition and has been one of my favorites. Its simple and the combination of the flavor of pork, rosemary and dijon are always a win.

So in typical fashion in getting ready to put this on the blog I made the pork, tried to stage it nicely and took a bunch of pictures. Then in my moment of brilliance I decided I needed to organize the pictures before writing this post. There in lies the problem…I deleted them having thought they were copied off somewhere else. So you will have to take my word for it the pictures were something to behold, they did the meat such justice.

So without further ado and before I lose the recipe with the pictures here it is.

Ingredients
1 pork loin (4lbs-ish)
2 tbsp dijon mustard (or more)
2 tbsp chopped red onion
2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 clove garlic minced or pressed
2 tbsp finely chopped rosemary leaves

Instructions
Several hours before grilling time, mix all ingredients except pork loin and dijon. Then you have a choice to make either flatten the loin by cutting into it the long way while rotating it to come out with one large and consistently thick piece of pork, like a piece of rolled out dough or just use it whole, both ways are superb. Rub entire piece of meat with dijon and then the rub the entire piece of meat with the rub made above. If you did not flatten the meat you can simply wrap it in saran wrap and throw it back in the fridge tell you are ready to cook it. If you did flatten it you will not need to roll it back up, like a long line of cinnamon rolls and then proceed to wrap it in saran wrap and toss it in the fridge tell cook time.

Once cook time comes around, prepare the grill for indirect cooking. With charcoal like below or with gas preheat the grill with both burners and turn the one you will be cooking over off. For gas grills place the loin on a grill rack over a drip pan. For charcoal you will have a drip pan filled with water in the center of the grill with charcoal on either side. Just toss the meat on the pre lubricated grate being sure if you flattened and rolled the meat it does not come unrolled. Cook indirectly until the center of the loin reaches you desired done-ness. I pulled mine at 148ºF and let it rest for 10 minutes before slicing into it.

Cooking indirectly over charcoal is easy and quite rewarding. Just prepare a normal amount of charcoal for your grill using a chimney or other method. Fill a foil pan with boiling water and place it in the center of the grill and tuck the charcoal on opposing sides of the pan. Be sure to add a half dozen briquettes every 45 minutes or so to keep a consistent fire. You can also toss on a chunk or two of wood to give it a little smoke flavor.

You will notice that the openings on my grill grate are strategically positioned over my charcoal pockets, this allows for easy replenishment.

Thanks to a gifted pork loin, I had to find something tasty to make of it and I did! Let such a beautiful piece of meat suffer in the bowels of tastelessness was not an option for me, and so I set out to the interweb to find the most delicious sounding recipe for this particular cut of meat I could find and I found many, but I finally settled on a recipe from Good Housekeeping entitled Sage and Rosemary Pork. Now the recipe calls for a substantial amount of fresh herbs which thankfully where all available on my patio herb garden, making this an easy and thrifty choice of meat. I prepared the meat just as the recipe called for except I ‘stuffed‘ it the night before and kept it in the fridge, upon arriving home this evening, I placed it in the oven and prepared the rest of the meal fried asparagus (just add a little olive oil, garlic powder and seasoning salt to taste and fry until bright green) and chipotle garlic mashed red skin potatoes. This was a culinary delight, no doubt I will have wicked breath for the remainder of the evening but the infusion of flavor from the stuff pork combined with the asparagus and potatoes was incredible. The pork was well flavored using this method and moist. If you are looking for a simple recipe for pork loin, I would suggest this. Be sure to check back, as I am finding so many amazing sounding recipes I will be sure to cook up more pork in the future.

The pork loin, fresh out of the oven, resting.