Pork Tenderloin
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 15 min + a few hours of ‘marinating’ time
Total Cook Time: 35 min
When I go to the supermarket, I ‘try’ to look for and purchase meats that are on sale. On my most recent trip, it was the pork tenderloin that was priced to sell (woohoo, hooray for swine flu!). The weather forecast predicted a few days of unseasonable warmth in Boston and I thought that I might be able to wake our grill from its winter slumber and put it to good use. Unfortunately our grill did not survive the harsh winter so I used our grill pan and trusty oven instead and liberally applied a spicy/smoky rub to the pork. Here’s what I used:
1 lb pork tenderloin – I cut mine up into 3 (roughly) equal size pieces
juice from 1/2 a lime
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chili powder – store-bought chili powder will also work
1 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp white sugar
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp allspice
Combine all of the above ingredients (except the pork and lime juice) and reserve for later. Place the pork into a medium-sized, flat tupperware container (make sure that it’s big enough so that you don’t have to stack the pork on top of itself). Add the lime juice and spread it all around the pork. Refrigerate, letting the pork sit in the lime juice for about 30 min total. After the first 15 min, flip the pork over. Remove the pork from the lime juice and coat each piece liberally with the spice mixture. Refrigerate the pork and allow the mixture to set for an hour or 2.
Set your oven to 400 degrees. Set a grill pan over medium heat and when it gets hot, add the pork. I cooked it for about 5 min per side. This process will not totally cook the pork through, but you do want the pork to develop a bit of char on the surface.
After about 10 min total on the grill pan, transfer the pork to an oven-safe pan (my grill pan isn’t oven-proof) and finish in the oven. The total cooking time in the oven will vary…I needed about 20 minutes of cooking to get the internal temperature of the pork up to about 150 degrees as registered by my instant-read digital thermometer. Once it reached 150 degrees, I pulled the pork out of the oven and placed on a big sheet of tin foil, which I used to form a closed-in tent around the pork. Let the pork rest in the tin foil tent for 5 min before service.
Yes, I know that my pork is pink on the inside. It is also very tender and very juicy. I’d rather it be bit pink and juicy than totally pale and dried out, which is what can happen when you cook it to the 160-165 degrees that some government agencies recommended. I say, screw the man! 150 degrees is a perfectly safe temperature for porcine cooking. It’ll also carry-over (increase in temp slightly) during the resting period.
