last night's pork loin

As is usual on the weeks that I don't plan out what we will be eating yesterday late afternoon rolled around and I realized we would be needing some dinner to eat yet again. I'm not sure why an activity we participate in every day seems to catch me off guard so often. You'd think by now it wouldn't be so surprising.

Last night what fell out of the fridge was a pork loin. I had purchased it thinking of the crock pot but as you may well know 3pm is too late for the crock pot. That's when I remembered my dutch oven. I had been waiting on cooler weather to break it out again. So I set to checking a few of my favorite blogs to find a recipe. I ended up with this one for herbed pork roast from Cooking Traditional Foods blog and this one for braised pork shoulder with tangy barbecue sauce from Simple Bites blog (it's at the bottom of the post).

I kind of combined them and threw in a leek I had in the fridge and it turned out rather tasty. I didn't take any pictures to show off and I'm not sure if it can be replicated since it was kind of thrown together. For what it's worth here's more or less what I concocted:

Last Night's Pork Loin

1 Pork loin of whatever size it is that they sell them at Trader Joe's
1 Tbs Coconut oil
1 Tbs Butter
1 Onion chopped
4 Carrots chopped
2 Leeks chopped
Swig of Apple Cider
2 Cups Chicken Broth
Salt
Pepper
Thyme

Salt, pepper and thyme (yes, I'm verbbing thyme) the pork then braise in the coconut oil and butter in dutch oven. Remove pork and set aside. Add onions, carrots and leeks to pot. Cook until softened. Return pork to dutch oven. Add Chicken Broth and Apple Cider (unless you forget you wanted to add the apple cider then wait awhile and add later). Let it simmer on the stove for over and hour then realize that you can put it in the oven. Put in the oven at 350 for another long period of time until the pork is fork tender (I think that means that it falls apart with a fork, at least that's what I want it to mean.)


When it was done I shredded the pork and added it to the Tangy Barbecue sauce which I made mostly following the actual recipe. I just traded the shallot for onion and left out the garlic and dijon. Oh and used sucanat instead of brown sugar. We ate it over rice (made using the leftover liquid in the pot and some added water) with a salad on the side.

Side note: we eat really late so if you want to eat at a normal dinner time you should probably start earlier in the day than I did.

What do you do with your pork loin?  What do you do with your dutch oven?