Roast Boneless Loin of Pork

From the book The Basic Gourmet by Diane Morgan, Dan Taggart, Kathleen Taggart, and Georgia Vareldzis

Serves

4

Introduction

Regularly available in nearly every supermarket or meat market in America, boneless pork loin is marvelously easy to prepare! Ideally, you will find a small roast that is not tied together with another in a butcher’s netting bag like Siamese twins. A single roast carves easier and cooks a little faster. (The bagged version might take a little longer to roast and will yield two pieces of meat from each knife slice, but tastes just the same.) A little coat of pork fat on top of the meat is good, if you’re so lucky, helping to keep the meat moist. Roast pork is wonderful served with some honey mustard, mashed potatoes, and a green or yellow vegetable.

Ingredients

	1¼ to 1½	lb. (1) boneless loin of pork
	1	Tbsp. olive oil
	¼	tsp. salt
	~	Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Steps

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Dry meat with a paper towel and place it on a roasting rack in a baking pan. Rub meat all over with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast, uncovered, in middle level of oven, until pork registers 150°F when tested with an instant-read thermometer, 50 to 60 minutes.
2. Allow roast to rest, loosely covered with foil, 10 minutes before carving to set the juices and prevent juice loss on your carving board. Carve across the grain into oval slices about ¼ inch thick.

Notes

• Roasting is one of the simplest forms of cooking. A heated box (your oven) supplies dry heat that cooks and browns to some degree whatever you put in it. All you need do, once food is in your oven, is figure out when it is finished cooking. Experience helps and so does an instant-read thermometer. See the equipment section and buy one today if you don’t already own one.
• Modern pork is bred to be lean and the loin is one of the leanest cuts. It will be dry if overcooked. Be forewarned.
• Boneless loin of pork is actually the center muscle from loin chops removed in a single long piece from the bones. The bones are then sold as pork back ribs.

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