Tag: Recipes

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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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Thanksgiving 2025

For our Thanksgiving celebration recently, we put together the following menu:

Serving Suggestion
  • Diestel Bone-in Organic Turkey Breast – 6 lbs. Used the recommended “rub” (a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, some salt, and smoked paprika) before putting into a pre-heated 325 degree oven. Came out perfectly at 165 degrees internal temperature after two hours. We let the turkey breast rest for 30 minutes while the stuffing (below) cooked in the same oven. Compared to roasting a full bird, this bone-in breast was a simpler, faster way to go! See: https://diestelturkey.com/products/organic-bone-in-turkey-breast
  • Sausage, apple and herb stuffing – based on a recipe by Ina Garten. We used Gala apples – although Granny Smith was recommended and might provide a little more apple flavor to the stuffing. We used a half-pound of Jimmy Dean regular pork sausage that we cooked ahead of time prior to sautéing the other ingredients before adding to the bread mixture. Some may want to use the full pound of sausage. Seemed like the 1 cup of chicken stock wasn’t enough so we used some additional to further moisten the bread cubes before putting into a 300 degree over for 30 minutes. We used the same oven as the turkey – we took the turkey out and put the stuffing in while slightly lowering the oven temperature. See: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/sausage-and-herb-stuffing-recipe-1943434
  • Butter-poached carrots – On a whim (actually based on a tip from Sam Sifton in his Morning newsletter for the New York Times) we made a small side dish of butter-poached carrots for the first time. “It doesn’t seem that butter, water and salt should result in carrots that taste this supremely of carrots, but the magic is evident in the incredible distilled carrot flavor, thanks to a little technique.” Couldn’t be easier – butter, water, salt – bring to a vigorous simmer for 10 minutes and you’re done. Instead of sliced carrots, I used a couple of handfuls of the mini carrots we get for snacking. Turned out great. A local steakhouse we enjoy visiting serves a side of broccoli and carrots with their steaks – and I’ll bet they’re using a simple recipe like this to prepare them. See: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1026250-butter-poached-carrots
  • Mashed potatoes and gravy – we used some local store-bought potatoes and gravy this year. Heated up in the microwave – couldn’t have been easier!
  • Missing this year: no rolls or bread (other than the stuffing). We also had some green beans we thought we’d sauté but decided that we had enough with the carrots, stuffing, etc. so skipped making them.
  • Dessert: For dessert we had a box of frozen chocolate cheesecake bits from Trader Joe’s which we just right – small but flavorful way to end the otherwise big meal! See: https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/chocolate-cheesecake-bites-077104

We started cooking about 2 PM and sat down for dinner about 5 PM. Not too much work and a wonderful Thanksgiving meal!

Diestel Bone-In Organic Turkey Breast – after cooking

PS: that stuffing is even better the day AFTER Thanksgiving!