Stuffed Pork Loin

DieselkW

We are entering a cold spell, and I wanted to use up a pork loin, this is my first attempt at this one.

Winter egging is different, for something so well insulated, it sure requires a LOT more fuel and vent adjustments to compensate for the ambient temperature.

Butterfly the loin into 4 even sections, halve it almost all the way through, open like a book. Then carefully halve each side of the book, working from the "spine" out, so you have have 4 connected sections of approximately equal thickness. Pound down any obviously too thick sections if you're inclined. Then make some stuffing:

Bacon fried, grease drained. Shallots fried in a little bacon grease while you're chopping the bacon into little tiny pieces. Put the bacon back in, add a half cup of ham bouillon (chicken if you don't have any ham flavored) and reduce for a few minutes. The bacon will plump up a bit. Add spinach, about 3 cups fresh - I just fill the pan with spinach and whatever other dark greens I find in the fridge. Let that just wilt - less than a minute.

Cool the frying pan mixture while you're setting up the egg in the freezing ar*se cold. Indirect - 250f. I bought 4 chunks of apricot wood for this cook, peach works as well. I imagine any fruit wood would work - I stay away from the strong flavored smokes like hickory or mesquite with pork, ymmv.

Note: At 10 degrees or so, to get the egg up to 250f, I had to use summer vent settings that would have gotten me to 400f.

That filling should be cool by now. Probably wet also. I drained it, but if you don't mind the carbs, just add enough breadcrumbs to dry it up - stir and spread all over the 4 "sheets" of pork loin. Season with black pepper.

Now just roll the pork, jelly roll style, from right to left or left to right, so that you basically re-assemble the original loin. I used some wooden sticks I have to keep it together, butchers twine would be fine.

Some leftover bacon for flavoring the outside, along with a little rosemary and salt - set in a roasting pan raised with whatever veggies you want in the bottom - we had some butternut cubes and celery, onions, - - a little of that ham bouillon to keep the veggies company goes in the bottom.

This took about 3 hours - had a temp increase as the water boiled off - which was fine with me finishing at 320f for the last 45 minutes or so.

Nice smokey flavor - not a bad ring for the temperature - if I had bothered to hammer those slabs into uniform thickness it would look better, but everyone had a second helping - always my favorite compliment.

Legume

Very nice, love the write-up

tulocay

Very nice indeed