Lovin' Me Some Pig...

In this day and age of everyone eating healthy, say the word "pork" and before the "k" sound leaves your mouth most people say "no thanks".  So today, I felt compelled to give pork some well-deserved, rather late-in-the-game attention.

Ahh my love-hate relationship with the pig....where shall I begin??  Being that I grew up in Appalachia, where it was not uncommon that animals were specifically raised for food, one of my chores at my grandparents was to "slop the pigs".  OK people -- this is not fun.  Basically it's feeding the pigs...but pigs are aggressive and scary if you're a kid.  If you've got food and they see you......move out 'da way!!  In my mind, pigs were nasty, vile creatures that required me to carry buckets of "slop" (buckets of leftover food) down to their pin where I was overtaken by a mob of these creatures.  It was primarily for this reason, this country-girl-turned-princess hated the pigs.  (I'll leave out the sordid details of butcher day....another not so fun, but necessary day I had to partake in.)

(I realize there are some of you that are now in shock visualizing your pal Jodie doing such things as I have described above.  Sit down, breathe and realize......Many, many things define THIS princess!!  :))

Enter bacon, BBQ, ham, pork chops and pork tenderloin.  Yum......

You know....pigs aren't so bad after all!!  Today I thought I would focus on the fabulous pork tenderloin.  But trust me when I say all of the above deserve their own dedicated entry:)

Ask me what my favorite meal or food is and without hesitation I will respond - "A perfectly prepared steak".    (I can't even get into that right now as my mouth at 830am starts to water).  But a very close second is pork tenderloin.

When prepared properly, Pork tenderloin will simply just melt in your mouth.  Once sliced, it will not even require a knife.  The other white meat?  I would wager and say it's in line for the ONLY white meat:)

The other great thing?  It's easy to prepare.  Salt/Pepper/Olive Oil and a thermometer and you're good to go! (except of course for the times I decide to stuff it, which I will save for another post:).  I'll start off by trimming any extra fat from the outside of a piece of tenderloin...salt and pepper both sides, throw some olive oil on it, stick a thermometer in it and in the oven it can go.  Now, of COURSE there are a multitude of things you can do with a pork tenderloin - but for today's purpose we're going to go stripped down, un-adulterated pork.

After prepping it (above) - I'll stick a thermometer in it and in the oven it goes. I generally try and cook a tenderloin on low heat for longer periods of time.  It's a very tender piece of pork, but the slow cooking will help ensure it stays that way:)  I generally set the oven to around 275 or 300 and let it go until the thermometer reads around 160 degrees.  Here's the thing folks, after you pull it out of the oven LET IT REST.  This is soooo important.  If you cut into it, all the yummy juices will run right out and it will produce a drier tenderloin.  So pull it out of the oven and let it sit a good 6-8 minutes.

Trust me, you'll only need a knife to slice it onto your place - after that melts in your mouth!