Brown Sugar Pork Loin

How many of you plan your menus around what’s on sale at the grocery store each week?  I’ve been planning my menus (a week at a time) for a long time, and I’m back to reviewing the sale ads and clipping coupons after a long baby-induced hiatus.  I’m fed up with spending $200 a week on groceries (for 2 adults and a 14 month old….ridiculous, right?)  Groceries are such an easy place to cut back spending, and all it takes is a little planning.  Now don’t go rolling your eyes at me.  Keep reading…this is not really a lecture on how you should plan your menus, but a tale of caution about the pitfalls of over-planning.

This week I read online at one of my couponing sites that pork loin was on sale at my grocery store.  “Woo hoo!”, I thought, “we love pork loin, and I’m getting tired of all this chicken and ground beef.  Bring on the pork loin!”  So I eagerly planned not one but TWO meals this week with pork loin.  And off to the store I went, with my list of sale items and coupons in hand.  After buckling The Littlest Apple into the cart, I realized that I failed to grab my grocery list.  List of sale items, yes, but the more important grocery list, no.  With a very short window-of-opportunity for shopping with my Littlest Apple (a ticking time bomb), I decided against my better judgment to press on and get as much as I could remember from the list.  Then, when I reached the meat section, the pork tenderloin, the star of my menu….NOT on sale.  As my Littlest Apple kicked off his shoes for the 30th time in 5 minutes and threw his pretzel to the ground, I tried to wrap my brain around what to do.  Do I buy something else that is on sale and come up with new dinner ideas on the fly?  Do I buy the pork at full price?  You see, I probably rely a little too heavily on my lists and my planning.  When things don’t go as planned, I get all out of sorts.  I don’t have a spontaneous bone in my body, except maybe my little toe.  As you’ve probably surmised from the title of this post, I bought the pork anyway at full price.  This recipe makes me so glad that I did!

The recipe comes from Kristin at You Got Served.  Kristin’s blog is new to me, but packed with delicious recipes.  I especially love her posts that include the full menus.  Those are great!   This pork is excellent and easy to make.  I love that you can just use one skillet and move it from the stove-top to the oven.  This makes a lot of meat, so I’m freezing half of mine with the glaze.  I’ll provide an update later on how it tastes reheated from the freezer.

Brown Sugar Pork Loin

from Kristin at You Got Served

Rub Ingredients:

• 2 t salt
• 1/2 t black pepper
• 1 t ground cumin
• 1 t chili powder
• 1 t cinnamon
• 2 pork tenderloins (2 1/2 lb. total)
• 2 TB olive oil

Glaze ingredients:

• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 2 TB finely chopped garlic
• 1 TB Tabasco

Preheat oven to 350.  Stir together salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder, and cinnamon, then coat pork with spice rub.  Heat oil in an ovenproof 12-inch heavy skillet over moderately high heat util just beginning to smoke, then brown pork, turning, about 4 minutes total.  Leave pork in skillet.

Stir together brown sugar, garlic, and Tabasco and pat on top of each tenderloin.  Roast in middle of oven until thermometer inserted diagonally in center of each tenderloin registers 140, about 25 minutes.  Let pork stand in skillet at room temperature 10 minutes.  (Temp will rise to about 155 while standing).