Balsamic Pork Tenderloin

Balsamic pork tenderloin: tasty (but nothing special, at least on my first try) and could work with any cut of pork (tenderloin is honestly an odd choice for slow cooking, but it was available and is fast, which is why I bought it).  All credit goes to addapinch and all blame to me. See her post for beautiful pictures.  

Calorie Estimate (assuming tenderloin): 900

Ingredients

• 1 T cooking oil
• 1.5 lb pork tenderloin
• 3/4 cup chicken broth
• 1 T soy sauce
• 1 T Worcestershire sauce
• 1 T honey
• 1/2 t ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar (if using the thin, salad dressing stuff) or 1/4 cup of the good ($30 bottle, delicious on vanilla ice cream and strawberries) stuff
• 2 t red pepper flakes
• salt to taste

Preparation

1. In a dutch oven, season the tenderloin with some salt and brown in the oil.
2. Mix the everything else marinade together.  Warm it first if you like.
3. When the meat is browned, add the marinade (well, pre-sauce/cooking liquid, since we didn’t soak first, it’s not really a marinade).
4. Cook low and slow until it hits 160 in the center, the lower the heat and hold it there until you’re ready to break it down and are 10 minutes from putting dinner on the table.  (Original recipe calls for a slow cooker, but I don’t have one.  Alternative is to marinade in the sauce first.)
5. Remove the meat, reduce the sauce.
6. If you’ve been patient enough that it’s falling apart and you want a pulled pork texture, pull it! Or slice it, up to you. Either way, serve with the reduced sauce.

Served with roasted rosemary red potatoes and an arugula salad with simple garlic vinaigrette.

This wasn’t bad, but would be a lot better with a pork shoulder and 5 hours of slow cooking!

Chicken Teriyaki

I’m not proud of this one, and I hesitate to post it, but it kinda didn’t suck and I could see myself making it again under similar circumstances.

So I’ve got two chicken breasts in the fridge and they either gotta get cooked or tossed.  It’s 9 pm and I’m hungry and my brain’s got no room for thinking.  So I slice the chicken thin, throw it in a non-stick soup pot, not yet on the stove (maybe I’ll end up poaching the chicken?) and then what?

Forget poached chicken (thankfully). I figure I’ve got some salty asian condiments that never go bad.  The chicken goes on the heat, some dark soy sauce gets poured in, a little miso paste, some chili-garlic sauce, and a splash of sesame oil.  Things cook and I figure, what the hell, let’s add a little honey…

Calorie Estimate: 900

Ingredients

• 1 lb. chicken breasts, sliced thin
• a few tablespoons of soy sauce
• 1 or so tablespoons of chili-garlic sauce (Sriracha brand)
• a dab of miso paste
• a splash of sesame oil (1/2 T maybe)
• 1-1.5 T honey

Preparation

1. Slice the chicken.  Throw all the ingredients (except the honey) into a nonstick pan of some sort, adding amounts until things look about right.
2. Cook over high heat until the chicken is cooked but still tender, a few minutes.
3. Take the chicken out, leave the liquid in the pot. The chicken will already have a bit of flavor from the cooking liquids.
4. Add some honey t0 the liquid in the pot and reduce into a sauce, maybe adding a pinch of corn starch if you need it.
5. Pour over the chicken, feel shame, then enjoy, maybe over some rice.

Done like above, things come out as salty and strongly flavored as at a Seattle-teriyaki joint, but not so sickly sweet.  I put in enough honey so that it’s there, but not the dominant flavor.

Honey Balsamic Glaze (Very Good Food)

Prep and Cook time: 20 minutes

To accompany some poor man’s filet mignon (flat iron steak) and blue cheese appetizers for our Superbowl potluck (to which the jrwalsh couple brought calzones and bacon-wrapped dates and nkurz129 brought some homebrew), I made my first balsamic glaze.  Had I known how stupidly easy it is to make, I would not have waited 27 years to try for the first time.

You don’t need to spend money on great balsamic to make this.  Great balsamic should probably be left alone.  But, you should make sure that what you actually buy is balsamic vinegar.  A lot of the cheapest stuff is actually red wine vinegar doctored with brown sugar, and may be labeled “Balsamic vinegar of Modena”.  The real stuff will have one ingredient listed: balsamic vinegar (or aceto balsamico).  Also the authentic stuff made traditionally and DOC-approved is labeled “Tradizionale di Modena” or “Tradizionale di Reggio Emilia”.

Tools:

• small pot
• wooden spoon
• 1 C measuring cup
• 1T measuring spoon

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 C Balsamic vinegar (read the label, make sure it’s not doctored red wine vinegar, or, buy this)
• 3 T honey

Method

1. In a small pot, pour in 1.5 cups of balsamic vinegar and 3 T of honey.
2. Boil on medium-high heat to reduce the mix to about 3/4 cup.  For this volume, this should take about 18 minutes (care of some nice carrots (“goodness”), or here).More important than the volume reduction is the development of caramelization.  When there’s a few minutes left, the mix will thicken noticeably and actually appear to grow in volume as bubbles start to maintain structure.  At this point, cook only for a few more minutes to let the taste develop.  Take it off the heat when the tartness is cut down and some nuttiness from the caramel is noticeable, but before the tartness is gone.
3. Let it cool for a few minutes and put it on everything: steak, fruit, brie, your girlfriend, crackers, and so on.