So. Easter dinner. It’ll be here soon, what are you going to serve? If you’re fresh out of ideas, here’s a meal that is Easter dinner-worthy without the heavy lift. Roasted pork loin, hasselback potatoes and ginger glazed brussels sprouts with carrots. Sounds simple, huh? It is. It’s an easy meal for two or 22.  And leftovers? Uh, no. If you’re ambitious enough you can also bake a pan of Homemade cloverleaf rolls and whip up some panna cotta with a mixed berry sauce or a peach cobbler for dessert. Smiles all around!

Pork loin can be a perfect choice for Easter dinner or any dinner, quite frankly.  It can also be a pretty bland hunk of meat and if it’s overcooked well, it can be pretty gag inducing, too. YIKES!  No one has to cook a sucky pork loin and it doesn’t take a ton of  time or advanced culinary chops to cook a juicy pork loin loaded with flavor that everyone loves.

Marinades, while delicious, won’t really fix a pork loin that cuts like wood. I’m certainly not saying that a marinade is useless, it can definitely add flavor to your meat. It will amp up the flavor on the surface and if it includes salt it will penetrate the meat some. A marinade also includes acid and can run the risk of leaving meat a little mushy. Brining however, will flavor the meat throughout and depending on the size of the cut, doesn’t have to take hours on end. It’s what I swear by.  The trick? Salt.

How To Brine Meat

There are tons of brine recipes on the internet but creating a brine is incredibly simple. Because pork loin is a very lean cut it tends to dry out quickly if it’s overcooked. Salt are the magic crystals that makes the meat more tender. It relies on osmosis to exchange the fluid in the brine with the water inside the meat. Brining alters the chemical structure of proteins by breaking some of the bonds that give proteins their shape. The salt denatures the meat proteins, causing them to unwind and trap water. 

 The salt in the brine helps to break down the muscle and collagen in the meat rendering it moist and not tight and chewy. A problem some people run into is brining the meat too long. If the meat soaks in the brine for too long, the protein bonds can tighten back up and push the liquid out, turning that hunk of meat awfully tough. You don’t have to do a days-long marathon brine because you don’t want to hit a saturation point and get to the point of diminishing returns. Here’s a pretty in depth explanation on brining from Cookshack that has way more insight on the finer points of brining meats. 

Roasted Pork Loin Dinner
The Sides:
Hasselback Potatoes

I like to think of hasselback potatoes as a baked potato upgrade. With the super thin slices, it makes a pretty presentation. It doesn’t matter how large, small or type of potato, it still looks great on a plate. I can’t seem to make the super thin slices some folks are able to.

My slices are about 1/8th of an inch apart at my best and if you’re like me and don’t have the ginsu knife skills of a Japanese chef, it’s much easier if you have a slicing assist for hasselback potatoes. If you have chopsticks handy, you can place the potato between them (I tape them down on the counter so they don’t shift around).

You can also use a couple of wooden spoons. You want to slice straight down but do not slice all the way through the potato. If you leave about 1/4″ uncut at the bottom you should be in safe territory and the chopsticks will stop you from slicing clean through the potato.

Brush a little melted butter and season with salt, pepper and other seasonings you prefer on your potato. Around halfway through baking, about 30 minutes, the slices will begin to fan out. I brush more butter on the potatoes to make sure I get as much buttery goodness all the way through the potato that I can. Once they’re done, garnish with fresh minced chives. You can also dress up the potatoes with my bacon jam or add bacon bits, cheddar, and sour cream. All of these would be fantastic on these potatoes too, but this recipe does not call for any of that . We’re going for simplicity here.

Brussels Sprouts

I grew up HATING brussels sprouts! I’m still not the biggest fan of those midget cabbages. I was trained to dislike them early because they were prepared so badly. There was a time a lot folks overcooked vegetables like brussels sprouts to oblivion to ensure they were done. This rendered them bitter, flavorless, waterlogged, and just plain awful and it made children all over the world cry. I’ve had them a few times since I was a kid and they were less bad but I wasn’t impressed.  That’s not the highest compliment you could pay for any food but, I have tried on rare occasions to try to like them because I know they are very healthy and good for me.

In giving this vegetable another shot after all these years, the brussels sprout has found redemption. These ginger glazed brussels sprouts are good and paired with roasted pork loin. Who knew? These sprouts along with baby carrots are sautéed in olive oil and butter, five spice powder, gingerale, garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. Sautee the brussels sprouts and carrots until they begin to caramelize, adjust the heat to medium, and add about a quarter cup of gingerale. Let the liquid simmer and reduce a little. Toss the brussels sprouts and carrots in the pan to ensure they are coated with the gingerale mixture. The sugar in the gingerale will help blunt some of the bitterness, and the fat of the oil and butter also offsets the bitterness of the brussels sprouts.

You Can Now Eat With Others, No Really!

The most awesome thing I’ve heard so far this year is it seems we are near the beginning of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic and can now begin to have small gatherings with friends and family if we and they have been fully vaccinated. YAY!  This means that we can sit down to a meal with humans other than the ones in our household (no offense to those humans). It’s just sometimes it’s refreshing to see different faces around the dinner table and now we can. YAY, again. 

Roasted Pork Loin

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Prep Time 12 hours hrs 30 minutes mins

Cook Time 40 minutes mins

Total Time 13 hours hrs 10 minutes mins

Course Main Course

Equipment

• large pot, large container to brine pork loin,

Ingredients

  

Brine:

• ½ cup Kosher salt per gallon of water
• ½ cup Sugar, per gallon of water
• 1 tsp Rosemary
• 1 tsp Thyme
• 1 tsp Cracked peppercorns

Pork loin

• 1 Pork loin
• 1 tsp Pepper
• Salt to taste
• 1 tsp Rosemary
• 1 tsp Thyme
• 1 tsp Garlic powder
• 1/2 tp Oregano
• 1/4 tsp Cayenne pepper
• ⅓ cup Grainy mustard
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tbsp Honey

Red Wine Reduction Sauce

• 1 cup Red wine
• 1 cup Vegetable broth
• ½ tbsp Shallots, finely chopped
• ½ tsp Minced garlic
• 1 tbsp Butter

Instructions

 

Brine

Add salt, sugar, rosemary, thyme and peppercorns to water. Once water come to a rolling boil, take off heat and let it cool completely. Add pork loin, cover and refrigerate for 12 hours.

Pork loin

• Preheat oven to 400°
• Mix seasonings with mustard and honey.
• Rinse, dry and truss pork loin to keep it's shape while cooking. Do not cut off the fat cap. Cover surface of meat with mustard preparation. Put in a roasting pan with a rack and cook for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, lower the temperature to 350° and cook pork loin 20 minutes for evry pound.
• Pork loin is done once the interior of the meat reads 145° with an instant read thermometer. Remove from oven, tent loosely with foil and let it rest for at about 15 minutes before slicing.

Red Wine Reduction Sauce

• Sautee' diced shallots an garlic in butter until transparent
• Add wine and simmer until it has reduced about ¼.
• Add beef broth and simmer until reduced by about half, about 5 minutes.

Keyword loin, pork, pork loin, roasted