Apple Cider-Brined Smoked Pork Tenderloin Recipe with Hard Cider Beurre Blanc Sauce
A delicious, tender tenderloin that is as fast as it is tasty. Adapted from a recipe by Jess Pryles.
Ingredients
For the Pork
- 2 Pork tenderloins about 3 lb total (they usually come in packages of two)
- 1 1/2 C apple cider the juice kind, not hard cider
- 8 oz ice
- 1 Tbsp salt
- 2 Tbsp sugar
- 2 tsp ground cardamom optional
- 2 tsp whole peppercorns or ground pepper if you only have that on hand
- 1-2 Tbsp pork rub
For the sauce
- 1 C Hard cider
- 1 shallot minced
- 1/2 Granny Smith apple peeled and minced
- 1/2 lb 2 sticks unsalted butter, chilled and cut into chunks
- Salt to taste
Instructions
Prepare and smoke the meat
- Make brine
- In a small saucepan, combine apple juice, salt, sugar, cardamom, and pepper.
- Bring to a boil, remove from heat, and add the ice to cool the liquid. An ice bath can further speed the chilling: place the bottom of the pot in an ice bath and chill to below 70°F (21°C).
- Trim the tenderloins of excess fat, if any, and silverskin.
- Tie the tail end under the rest of the tenderloin.
- Place the tenderloins and the brine in a large zip-top bag and refrigerate for 1–1 1/2 hours.
- Heat your smoker to 250°F (121°C) with the wood of your choice. (Apple is great for this apple-laden dish.) Use the Pro-Series air probe attached to your RFX GATEWAY to monitor the smoker temperature.
- Remove the tenderloins from the brine, pat dry, and season with the BBQ rub.
- Insert RFX MEAT into the very center of the loin, being sure to hit the minimum insertion depth, and set the high-temp alarm for 145°F (63°C).
- Smoke the tenderloin, monitoring the smoker temperature with RFX GATEWAY's other input channel. (Set the high alarm for 275°F [135°C] and the low alarm for 225°F [107].)
- When the high alarm on the meat sounds, verify the temperature with your Thermapen ONE.
- Remove the meat from heat, cover with foil to allow to rest, and make your sauce.
Make beurre blanc
- To a wide pan, add minced shallot and apple as well as the hard cider.
- Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
- Allow almost all the liquid to boil out. What is left should be syrupy.
- Remove the pan from heat and start whisking in the butter, a few pieces at a time. This will take a while, as the sauce will cool as you add more butter to it.
- The sauce should thicken and resemble thick cream in consistency, or even something like thin mayonnaise. To go extra fancy, strain the sauce to remove the chunks. But this is still BBQ, so maybe leave them in. Also, the apple chunks are particularly delicious.
- Taste for salt and add more if more salt is needed. (Or you can use some of the same rub you seasoned the pork with to incraese the salt of the sauce.)
Serve
- Brush the tenderloins with the beurre, slice and serve with more sauce for dipping.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!