Possibly the easiest recipe on this blog and quite possibly one of the tastiest! Last night was “Sunday Night Roast Night” in the Matla home and as such I pulled out one half of a pork loin that was butchered for me a few weeks back by none other than “The Pig Lady!” Oink Oink Ms Piggy…you delivered again!
The secret to any good meal is sometimes simplicity. Try this one out the next time you grill or even want to roast something up in the oven.
One pork loin – about 1 to 1.5 kg
4 cloves of garlic, smashed and finely minced
3 more cloves of garlic, sliced thinly but not crushed (you’ll insert these into your pork loin)
2 long sprigs of fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
1.5 teaspoons of Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper
Pre-heat your Big Green Egg to 400 degrees F and set it up for Indirect heat, that is, no direct flame
A handful of apple wood chips
A platesetter
Bring your pork loin up to room temperature or at least take it out of the fridge for about 30 minutes. At this point, take the crushed garlic, rosemary, oil, salt and pepper and make up a bit of a paste. Don’t make it too thick and if it looks that way, just add a tiny bit more olive oil. Set that aside.
Simply, take a roasting tray and cover it with aluminium foil then chop up some classic veg to add. In our case I added new potatoes, eggplant, asparagus (much to my stupidity as my wife was kind to point out that after an hour roasting, asparagus will turn out nothing short of tiny little wooden twigs….for once, she was right!) I also added some red Spanish onions, extra garlic and some more rosemary for a bit more flavour. Coat the vegetables in olive oil and give them a good solid seasoning.
Take a sharp paring knife and make enough holes into the loin so that you can add in the rest of your garlic slices. Make sure you space them out evenly to get all that lovely flavour throughout the loin. Now, coat your loin in the rosemary/garlic paste and give it a good seasoning with Kosher Salt and freshly ground black pepper then add the loin onto a V-rack and place that into the roasting tray. Place the loin fat side down on the rack. In any case, there’s usually very little fat on the loins I get but if you do have a bit, roast it with this side down. Once ready, chuck some apple wood chips onto the fire, set the roasting tray and v-rack down onto the grate and shut the dome.
Set your clock for 30 minutes and once it pings, flip the roast around so the bottom side gets an even roasting from the top.
At 55 minutes (total time) you’re pretty much done. Take the loin off the v-rack and wrap it in some aluminium foil and then transfer your veg to a serving plate. Let the pork rest for 10 minutes and then slice it nice and thin and place it back onto your veg then serve.
Really simple but oh so tasty!
Heather was in heaven with this one and I was too…but that was largely due to the homemade fudge brownies and honey/vanilla ice cream that followed.
Overall Heather Rating: A hands-down 10/10
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
PS – David McKinley, you are a Dufus for missing this meal! Just wanted to point that out!
Comments