A dish cooked by my husband when Sunday was Daddy Cooks Day. It’s one of the best dishes that Speedy has ever made. He’s tried it twice and the second attempt was ten times better than the first.
To be fair, he wasn’t even much of a cook when I met him having grown up with a mother who cooked well. So, when we were newly married, he could fry eggs and hotdogs, and cook a few dishes, and that was that.
When I started food blogging, I also started to accumulate cookbooks. I couldn’t enter a bookstore without buying a cookbook. As a result, I gave Speedy a cookbook for Christmas in 2007. I have always firmly believed that cooking is a life skill rather than a gender-based chore, after all.
It was a cookbook for dudes, really (Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens: Killer Recipes for Guys by Tucker Shaw). And there were recipes that intrigued him. Tequila pork loin was one of them. It would take him three months to muster the energy to make it but the result was, well… shall we say I didn’t mind the three-month wait.
The recipe called for marinating pork tenderloins in a mixture of tequila and olive oil with limes (lemons were substituted), onions, garlic, chili, salt and pepper. Then, the tenderloins were seared and semi-butterflied to create space for apricot jam before going into the oven. Rosemary is sprinkled on top and the pork cooked for another ten minutes.
That’s the tequila pork loin from the first attempt. The EXIF data of the photo says it was cooked a little after 1:00 p.m. of March 9, 2008. It was delicious! But right there and then, Speedy said it would have been nicer if the pork had a little fat to make the meat more moist.
Four months later, we moved to a new house. New kitchen, new oven… And Speedy cooked tequila pork loin again.
This time, he used a slab of pork loin. Not pork tenderloin as the recipe in the cookbook specified. The layer of fat made all the difference. Moist and tender meat that did not dry out as it cooled on the dining table.
This recipe is an adaptation of what you’ll find in Tucker Shaw’s cookbook. The prep and cooking processes have been considerably modified and the following substitutions were made:
- Dried rosemary for fresh
- Lemons for limes
- Pork loin in lieu of pork tenderloins
- Butter in place of olive oil for searing
(This recipe used to be in the old blog. It was never republished here because it was sent as a newsletter on Substack. I am leaving Substack, and as I move the archive, I am choosing where to best make everything fit. This recipe belongs here.)
Tequila pork loin
Ingredients
- 1 kilogram pork loin
- 4 tablespoons rock salt
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ¼ cup tequila
- ¼ cup olive oil not extra virgin
- 6 cloves garlic peeled and lightly pounded
- 2 onions peeled and cut into eighths
- 2 lemons cut into eighths
- 1 finger chili sliced
- 2 tablespoons butter
- ½ cup apricot jam
- 3 to 4 pinches dried rosemary soaked in a tablespoon of olive oil
Instructions
- Rinse the pork loin and rub dry with a kitchen towel. Using a metal skewer or a long and very thin kife, poke holes into the meat (this is to ensure that the seasonings go all the way inside).
- Rub the salt and pepper all over the meat.
- Drop the meat into a resealable bag. Pour in the tequila and olive oil. Drop in the garlic, onions, chili slices and lemons.
- Seal the bag and turn over several times to distribute the seasonings, spices and lemon.
- Marinate the pork loin in the fridge overnight.
- Take the pork loin out of the bag (discard everything else including the bag) and leave to drain on a rack as it warms to room temperature.
- Preheat the oven to 350F.
- Heat the butter in an overproof frying pan.
- Slide in the pork and sear on all sides.
- Off the heat, with the fatty side of the pork pointing to the ceiling, slash the pork loin diagonally. The slash should be at least an inch and a half deep. Go deeper if your slab of meat is really thick. Three to four slashes about an inch and a half apart is ideal.
- Stuff those slashes with apricot jam. Sprinkle the rosemary (minus the soaking oil) on top.
- Pop the pork into the preheated oven and cook for 40 to 50 minutes (depending on the thickness of the meat).
- Slide the pork loin to a chopping board, cover loosely with foil, leave to rest for ten minutes, and slice thickly.
- We like our tquila pork loin with mashed potatoes and buttered corn.
