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
- Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Soften the shallot 2 minutes.
- Add the apples, salt, and thyme. Cook 4–5 minutes until they start to soften and pick up a little color.
- Add cider or wine and scrape the pan. Let it reduce by about half.
- 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.
- Taste. Add lemon or vinegar so it stays bright, not heavy.
- 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.
