I had the house to myself this evening, so I thought I would indulge in a little smoked pork.
I don’t normally get that excited about loins, but in this case, the pig was young and insanely tender. The whole loin was only 2.5 pounds!
When you cook a whole loin, wrapped in the fat back like this you can’t really go wrong. Especially if you’ve got an epic scavenged cooker like the one I found at the dump!
Smoked Pork Loin
THE BREAKDOWN
I started off with a cure of equal parts sea salt and brown sugar. Then I added some mustard seeds, bay leaf, allspice, coriander and black pepper.
I gave the loin a nice rub down and left it to cure for two days.
Then, I rinsed it thoroughly and left it to dry uncovered overnight in the fridge.
I fired up that ole dump cooker and got the fat back browned up nicely all over.
I slid the loin in the front, moved the fire to the back, and lowered the temperature to 275-290F. I also threw in a handful of speckled alder for flavour.
I let it smoke for three hours, until the internal temperature hit 135°F.
I removed it from the heat and foiled it for a half hour. I got excited at this point of the operation. It came out perfectly medium.
I had braised some beans and cranberry ketchup, grilled some savoy cabbage and tossed it with cider vinegar and wild sage to eat with it. Good times!
