I have shared a recipe for pork tenderloin before, but I really like this cut so I decided to up my game a little and stuff it with caramelized mushrooms and onions. After all that butterflying and spreading eagle and stuffing and tying with string, it started to feel a little 50-shades-of-grey…for the pork I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter! Anyway, the end result was super tasty, and of course, made great left overs.

Mushroom-Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pound package of pork tenderloin
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil or Grapeseed Oil (*Don’t be cheap alert)
• 1 cup mushrooms, chopped
• 1 large, yellow onion, chopped
• 1/2 tsp dry oregano
• 1/2 tsp dry rosemary
• Salt and pepper

Prep

For the filling…

• Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a medium pan. Add the chopped onion and sauté until translucent.
• Add the mushrooms and sauté for about 3 minutes.
• Remove from heat and stir in seasonings. Set aside.

Now,

• Pre-heat the oven to 400 Degrees.
• Trim any silver skin and excess fat from roast, wash it off thoroughly, and pat dry with a paper towel.
• Rub the roast all over with the oil and place in a roasting pan.
• Sprinkle the roast with salt and then freshly ground black pepper.
  Make sure you roll the roast around so it gets coated everywhere with the seasoning.
• Butterfly the tenderloin by cutting it straight down the center to about 3/4 of the roast’s depth. Spread open and spoon the mushroom sauté into the middle.
• Using butcher string, close the roast up and wrap the string around in about 1 inch intervals. Tie it off. This part is messy; don’t over think it. Just close the roast up and secure as best you can.
• Roast in the oven for about 30 minutes. Now is a good time to make stuffing or whatever sides you’ll be serving is this is a fancy, Sunday dinner.
• After the timer goes off, grab your digital thermometer and check the temp in the thickest part of the roast. If it’s between 158 and 160 degrees, pull the roast out and cover it with foil. Let it rest for at least 10 minutes before slicing.

If you want gravy….

• Grab a baster and suck out the drippings. Add a 1/4 cup of the drippings into a small sauce pot and turn the flame on low. Stir 1/4 cup of flour into a measuring cup filled with 2 cups of COLD water and mix well.
• Now comes the tricky part. While stirring the drippings constantly, slowly add the flour/water mixture to the drippings. Keep stirring! Keep stirring and stirring until you start to see the gravy get thick and smooth. If it’s thin, don’t stress. The cold air will thicken it when you are done cooking.
• Taste it. If it’s bland, add in more drippings a 1/4 cup at a time until you reach gravy nirvana. You can add in salt and pepper to season. You can add in a splash of white wine or sherry if its handy, or a dash of cayenne if you want a little zippy-do-dah thing happenin’.

It was funny because the high heat scalded my drippings as the roast cooked so I was freaking out about my gravy. I wanted to serve it sliced over french bread, open-faced sandwich style with stuffing on the side. I spent so much time making the roast that I ran out of energy and patience to make stuffing and now I would have no gravy?? I ended up doing some weird gravy hack using cream of chicken soup, just to have something to soak the bread. It turns out, we didn’t need gravy at all. The mushroom mixture was so delicious and savory and the roast turned out so perfectly tender, it didn’t need a date to this disco. Live and learn.

~Nom On