Grilled Pork Tenderloin Roast

September 21, 2014

Menu

Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Hoisin Glaze

Grilled Potatoes

Grilled Sweet Corn

Bread and Butter Pickles
Lone Goat Vineyards Marlborough Pinot Noir 2009

Recipe

Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Hoisin Glaze from July, 2013, Cook's Illustrated

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It has been a few weeks since we had this Sunday dinner so there are certainly details that I have forgotten. I didn't even take notes right after the meal, as I often do, so my recollections are even more vague. This could be a pretty short post.

Our favorite way to prepare pork tenderloin is to roast it with a maple syrup glaze. The July 2013 issue of Cook's Illustrated has a recipe for a grilled pork tenderloin that I have been wanting to try. Is it better than our favorite?  Several glaze recipes are included and I chose one based on hoisin sauce. One of my favorite dishes at a local Chinese restaurant is Mu Shu Pork which features hoisin sauce, so I am predisposed to like the combination of pork with hoisin.

The roast was created by tying two pork tenderloins together creating a more uniformly-shaped roast which would cook more evenly. The roast was soaked in a brine for an hour and cooked on the gas grill, initially on the cool side of a two-temperature grill, then seared on the hotter side with the glaze. The total grilling time was about 40 minutes. Additional hoisin glaze was served with the sliced pork at the table.

Except for the homemade bread and butter pickles, the side dishes were also grilled.  The last of our fresh, local sweet corn this summer was cooked using the technique that I recently discovered: the corn is oiled, cooked on the grill to char some of the kernels, then finished by steaming it in the microwave. I simplified this from the original, omitting the seasoned butter which didn't seem to add much flavor. Potatoes were grilled, also. White potatoes were cut into ¼-inch slices, coated with oil, seasoned with salt, and pepper, and grilled over direct heat. Simple and delicious.

A quick note on the wine. Our son, Caleb, and his girl friend, Karley, live in a cottage on a winery, Lone Goat Vineyards, near Christchurch, New Zealand. Caleb brought us a bottle of wine from that winery on a visit this previous summer, though the grapes were grown further north.

Do we have a new favorite method for cooking pork tenderloin? I don't think so. While this recipe produced moist, tender slices of pork accented by the hoisin glaze and sauce, it is not quite as good as the maple-glazed pork. However, this is a very good way to cook tenderloin on the grill. Putting two tenderloins together did ensure that the meat along the length of the roast was cooked evenly with no overdone or underdone regions.