The Last Pork Roast

 

I could eat chicken every night! I love how easy it is to manipulate, how wonderfully moist it is, how it can soak up other flavors easily, or serve as a simple protein when there's another special flavor to feature in a dish.

 

Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for this low-fat choice (boo), so I have been searching for an easy dinnertime meal that will stand up to chicken. Pork is another low-fat meat that should be a terrific substitute for my go-to chicken. Supposedly, it is simple to make a delicious meal out of this ingredient, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong! Every time I attempt to use this ingredient, my end product is too dry and chewy.

 

I told my boyfriend we were officially finished with pork, but when our local grocer had pork loin on a BOGO special, I decided to give this seeming nemesis of mine one last chance: one last meal to either turn me and my boyfriend into lifelong fans or to be dismissed from my kitchen forever.

 

I looked up countless pork loin recipes, and finally decided to combine snippets from Giada's show I had been watching while on the treadmill (running while watching cooking shows is my number-one favorite activity!) and this recipe from epicurious.com. Fingers crossed, I followed the website's instructions for ingredients, but after rubbing my pork loin down with the garlic and spices, I let it sit in a marinade made of EVOO, red wine (Cabernet), Worcestershire, and a bit of chicken broth for about 3 hours, turning to coat every hour.

 

As I don't have a roasting rack, I used rolled-up aluminum foil to set the roast above a lined pan,and roasted for 30 minutes at 400 degrees before turning it over and roasting another 30 minutes or so, until the suggested internal temp of 155F.

 

This was by far the best pork loin I have made! It had a very flavorful, herby taste, and the crust was beautiful and savory. Yet, even though I took the extra time to marinate the pork and cook it slowly, it still tasted slightly dry, and it was enough to turn us both off of pork forever. I feel like maybe I'm missing some trick of the trade, and that pork is not my nemesis; it is simply a misunderstood ingredient that could produce wonderful meals if properly coaxed.

It was a splendid last stand for this dish, but for our household, it was just not enough to continue to try to improve...for now...