Tomato Garlic Pork Loin Roast

Cooking large meats sometimes makes me nervous. I don't want to under or over cook it. I mean, I can work with an undercooked meat. But once you overcook it, it's a wrap. It becomes tough and dry, and who wants to waste a giant piece of meat?! Not me! So the thought of messing up attempting to cook a large piece of meat has intimidated me a bit. But no more. Granted, I wasn't cooking a large turkey or whole beef tenderloin (I can't even imagine messing either one of those up!), I was only cooking a 1.75 lb pork loin roast. But it still seemed large, and therefore somewhat of a challenge. And I still wouldn't say I know how to cook a pork loin roast perfectly every time. The length of time to cook certain meats can vary depending on how big the meat is. So I like to use the times on the original recipe as guidelines, as well as compare to other pork loin roast recipes on the web, with a side of my own judgment. Because, like I said, I would hate hate hate to overcook such a large, nice piece of meat. While this roast wasn't perfect, it was decent... I'm not rushing to make it again though. I want to keep practicing with different recipes and one day cook a pork roast to the perfect tenderness and juiciness. But at least I got my first try out of the way!

Tomato Garlic Pork Loin Roast

adapted from Living the Gourmet

• 1.5 - 2 lb pork loin roast
• 3 cloves of garlic
• handful of fresh parsley
• 1/2 cup grape tomatoes
• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup chicken broth, + more for basting, if desired
• 1 bay leaf

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place the garlic, parsley, tomatoes, olive oil, and pepper in a food processor and pulse a few times to chop.

Place the pork in a baking pan and top with the chopped tomato mixture. Add 1/4 cup chicken broth to the pan with the bay leaf and roast in the oven. Add more broth to the pan, basting pork, if desired.

Bake about 25-30 minutes per pound, or until temperature reaches about 145-150 degrees. Let rest for 15 minutes, as pork will continue to cook to about 155-160 degrees.



Printable Recipe

As you can see, we served this with some red potatoes. I think I would have preferred it with a brown coating from a quick sear. But I did skim over a few different pork loin recipes and none of them said to sear it first, so obviously I don't know what I'm talking about :) Everything about the coating sounds appealing... tomatoes, garlic, and herbs, so why didn't I like it as much as I feel I should have? Maybe it was the quality of the pork loin roast we bought. Or maybe the cooking time was off? Is 25-30 minutes per pound accurate? I'm not sure really. But I'm hopeful and will check out other pork loin roast recipes to see if those are more to my likings.

Does anybody have any delicious pork loin roast recipes to share? How do you feel about pork roasts?

Peace, and bacon grease!