Category: Pork

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Roast Pork Loin – Leftovers

For a relative’s recent birthday dinner, we made one of her favorite dishes: roast pork loin with apples and shallots. This is a recipe we often made for Christmas dinner years ago and it’s always been a favorite of our guests. This week’s birthday dinner was the same – a tasty hit! Here’s the link to our original recipe.

We also shared an updated recipe which uses dry brine ahead of time – and it’s become my go-to technique for this dish. It’s much simpler and easier than wet brining and delivers very tasty results!

The next question is: what to do with the portion of the pork loin roast that’s almost always left over. This year I decided to make another portion of the apple/shallots mustard cream sauce with sliced chunks of the remaining roast pork loin added to it when it’s ready. Very tasty leftovers!

I used AI to help me with the recipe for the sauce. Here’s what I ended up preparing:

Creamy Granny Smith sauce for leftover pork

Serves 2–3. About 15 minutes.

Ingredients

  • 2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, diced
  • 1 small shallot or ¼ onion, minced
  • 1 Tbsp butter
  • Pinch of salt
  • ¼ tsp thyme (or a little sage)
  • 2 Tbsp apple cider, apple juice, or dry white wine
  • ⅓–½ cup cream
  • 2 tsp Dijon mustard
  • Squeeze of lemon or splash of cider vinegar
  • Leftover pork loin, sliced into small chunks

Method

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Soften the shallot 2 minutes.
  2. Add the apples, salt, and thyme. Cook 4–5 minutes until they start to soften and pick up a little color.
  3. Add cider or wine and scrape the pan. Let it reduce by about half.
  4. Stir in the cream and Dijon. Simmer 3–4 minutes until the sauce thickens enough to coat a spoon. The apples should still have some shape.
  5. Taste. Add lemon or vinegar so it stays bright, not heavy.
  6. Nestle the pork chunks into the sauce, spoon some over the top, cover, and warm 2–3 minutes on low. Don’t boil it or the pork will toughen and the cream can split.

If the leftover pork loin is a bit dry, this is one of the better ways to use it: the cream and apple juices give it moisture back.

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My Favorite Memorial Day BBQ Recipes

Hard to believe we’re into Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start of summer! It’s a perfect weekend for firing up the BBQ and doing some grilling! Here are a couple of recipe ideas to tempt your appetite:

For a great side dish to go with the tri-tip, try my recipe for Scott’s Easy Baked Onions – or the Melted Onions actually cooked in the charcoal coals of the BBQ.

Fire up that grill – and have a great holiday weekend!

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What’s for Christmas Dinner? Pork Loin w/Apples!

Tonight, we’re making a pork loin roast for Christmas dinner – using one of our old favorite recipes but tweaked just a bit for this year’s event. (Isn’t recipe tweaking what fun cooking is all about?)

We’re trying dry brining the pork loin for a few hours in advance of cooking. The advocates of dry brining suggest that a day or so is the ideal timing for it – but I didn’t decide to try it until just a few hours before we need to serve dinner! So, it will be an abbreviated version.

To do the dry brining, I covered the pork loin (a 3.3 lb roast this year) with salt and put it into the refrigerator uncovered. When it’s time to cook, I’ll rinse the salt off the roast and then season it with salt, pepper and Penzey’s Bavarian Seasoning. From there, it’s back to our original recipe!

This pork loin roast turned out REALLY GREAT! Even though the dry brining was abbreviated, the roast came out great – moist, not dry at all – and a perfect compliment to the apple/cream/mustard topping. To add a bit more complexity to the topping, I also included a couple of rosemary springs and a layer of sliced red onion. This combination added beautiful flavor and complexity to the topping.

We’ve cooked this recipe many times over the years – although not much if ever during 2012. Today’s treatment makes us want to come back to it again soon. Try it for your family – it’s a huge favorite with ours!

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What’s for Dinner Tonight? – Saturday Oct 22, 2011

Tonight, we’re making a pork loin roast using this old recipe from Scott’s Kitchen. This was one of our regular favorites back in the day – but it’s been a few years since we’ve made it. The feel of fall in the air today tempted us to upgrade to this pork loin roast from a quick pork tenderloin recipe we were considering for tonight’s dinner.

I made one addition to tonight’s recipe – adding a hearty coating Penzey’s Bavarian Seasoning and a bit of lime juice as a rub before searing the roast in the French Oven. Sure smelled wonderful when I seared it just a few minutes ago!

After taking the roast out of the oven and wrapping it in aluminum foil, it’s time to remove the apples and then deglaze the French Oven with a bit of wine.

After deglazing, simply put the apples back into the pot, add in the cream and the mustard and you’ve got the perfect sweet/tart side dish to compliment the pork. This is a wonderful combination – love those Granny Smith apples!

Perhaps add a green salad like we did tonight and you’re done. A great hearty weekend meal!

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Scott’s Easy Skillet Pork Chop Dinner with Lemon-Mustard Sauce

Yesterday, I picked up some boneless pork chops from Trader Joe’s – each about 3/4 of an inch thick. These chops are perfect for a quick (25 minutes or so) meals when cooked in a skilled on the stove. They’re also low fat!

This technique involves first searing the pork chops on high heat for 2 minutes/side to get a nice flavor on the outside – and then slowing down the cooking with some liquid that helps keep them moist and flavorful on the inside. The mustard and lemon juice used for the finishing sauce adds a very nice sweet/sour taste to the chops – they’re delicious.

Here’s my recipe – modified from Mark Bittman’s recipe.

  • An hour or two before I cook the the chops – or at the last minute if I forgot (!), I first coat them liberally on both sides with my favorite pork seasoning rub – Penzey’s Galena Street. This rub is an absolute must have for grilling thick pork chops on the Weber BBQ – and its equally good for these pan-fried chops. Trust me, Penzey’s Galena Street Rub is just the best for pork chops!
  • Heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil on medium-high heat in the skillet until it’s shimmering. Add the chops to the skillet and turn the heat up to high. Cook on high for 2 minutes per side.
  • Add 1/2 cup white wine, 1 Tbsp minced garlic and 1 Tbsp minced shallots (we love both of these from Penzey’s – we’re fortunate to have a local Penzey’s outlet here in Menlo Park!). Turn the heat down to low and cover the pan. Set a timer for 10 minutes. While you’re waiting, you can toss a quick salad or sauté some fresh veggies to accompany the chops.
  • When the timer is up, check the chops for doneness – firm to the touch – and, if done, remove them to a platter. You should still have some liquid left in the pan – if not add a touch of water. Then add 1 Tbsp lemon juice plus 2 Tbsp coarse mustard. Reduce this a bit over medium-high heat and then pour a bit over the chops. Put the rest into a small bowl or pitcher to accompany the chops to the dinner table. You’ll want to add more of the sauce to the chops – and maybe the veggies – during the meal!

That’s it – about 25 minutes start to finish – not counting the 5 minutes it takes to rub the chops in advance. Hope you enjoy!

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Scott’s Favorite Slow Roasted Chipotle Pork

Slow Roasted Chipotle Pork

Updated: December 25, 2021 during Covid times! This is our Christmas dinner today!

This is truly one of those 5 minutes to prepare recipes. Basically, coat the pork shoulder roast, throw it in the Dutch oven and then into the real oven for slow roasting. The hard part is done!

Makes really great pork tortillas — or just pork to pile onto your plate. Great with salsa on the side!

I originally came across a version of this recipe in The New Cooks Tour of Sonoma by Michele Anna Jordan. It became a Loftesness family favorite from the first time we tried it!

Ingredients

  • 3 tablespoons kosher salt
  • 1 tablespoon chipotle powder
  • 1 pork shoulder roast, about 3 1/2 lbs
  • 2 dozen small corn tortillas
  • 2 limes, cut in wedges
  • 1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro

Directions

  1. In a small bowl, mix together the salt and chipotle powder and rub it into the pork, being sure to cover the entire surface of the meat with the mixture.
  2. Put the pork in a clay roaster or other deep roasting pan with a lid, place the covered roaster in the oven, and turn the heat to 275°F.
  3. Cook until the pork falls apart when you press it with the back of a fork, about 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Remove it from the oven and let rest, covered, for 15 minutes.
  4. Heat the tortillas on a medium-hot griddle, turning them frequently, until they are warmed through and soft. (Alternatively, heat them on a plate in the microwave). Wrap them in a tea towel and place them in a basket.
  5. Transfer the pork to a large serving platter and use two forks to pull it into chunks.
  6. Add the lime wedges to the platter, place the cilantro in a small serving bowl, and serve immediately, with the tortillas on the side.
  7. To fill the tortillas, set two, one on top of the other, on a plate, spoon some of the pork on top, squeeze a little lime juice over the pork, sprinkle some cilantro on top and fold in half.

Variations

We had some romaine lettuce left over from an
earlier salad and found that adding a bit of lettuce to the tortilla filling added a refreshing bit of ‘crunchiness’ to the taste. Yum!

Another good side dish is sautéed peppers and onions (3 sliced bell peppers, 1 sliced yellow onion, olive oil, touch of cumin, and touch of paprika). Goes great in the tortillas! We had this for our Christmas 2021 dinner.

Here’s a link to Elise Bauer’s blog post about a recent Wall St. Journal recipe for Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder with Melted Apples that we made recently. Also very nice without the heat of the chipotle pepper.

Note that she starts the roasting at 450 degrees uncovered for the first 30 minutes before covering it and reducing the heat to 325 degrees. I find roasting at 275 degrees works well – low and slow makes for fall apart tender pork!