Food You Can Eat: Rosemary and Garlic Pork Loin with a Side of Roasted Parmesan Brussels Sprouts

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This is a great pairing. I separated the two recipes but you might want to do both together. During the first half of the pork loin phase you will, if you’re me, be drinking a big glass of wine and mambo-ing with your dog. Trust me, this will all make sense. But you can also prep the Brussels sprouts, and during the second half put them in with the pork loin so your oven does double duty. I have a Viking gas stove so mine seems to heat pretty evenly no matter where I put things. If you do both of these you have to choose a rack. If you know which half (top or bottom) heats up more, put the pork there and the sprouts below/above. You really want to make sure the pork is cooked and the sprouts can tend to char. 

A note about the Viking gas stove. About five or six years ago we had people over for dinner, and I talked about the food I had made, and I mentioned the Viking gas stove. When they left my Life’s Helpmeet, who was a little drunk, said, “Why do you talk about the Viking gas stove so much? Are people so impressed by this? It’s like that obnoxious friend of yours who says, ‘when I was in college in Boston’ and everyone knows he means Harvard, and Harvard’s not even in Boston. I mean the first time he pulled this I thought he meant UMass Boston, or maybe BU. I’m from Boston. Where does he get Boston from Harvard?”

“It seems to be a weird Ivy League thing. The next time you see X ask her where she went to school. She’ll say, ‘New Jersey.’ What she means is Princeton, not Bergen Community College. Are you sober enough to take the dog out for me?”

The recipe, believe it or not, feeds the two of us and a little pork for the dog, but make sure you cut away any of the rosemary crust. If you have any pork leftover, we did a couple of times, God knows how, refrigerate it overnight and the next day slice it into chunks and grill/stir fry it with some soy sauce, a chili or two, some sliced onion, some garlic, some water, and some bell peppers and serve over rice.

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For the Pork Loin

1 2-1/2 lb. boneless pork loin. It’s important that it’s boneless because you’ll be slicing when you’re done, and if you use bone-in you have to cook longer. You DO NOT want to eat under-cooked pork.

4 cloves of garlic, minced.

Rosemary. You don’t need a lot of this. I have access to fresh rosemary, so I chop four or five sprigs. You can use ground/dried rosemary, maybe a level or heaping tbs. This is a preference.

As much salt as you want, I’d guess I use about 1 tsp.

1 tsp. black pepper. This I know because I measure. Just the 1 tsp. makes for a peppery pork loin. Too much is too much and at least with black pepper I know my limits.

White wine, but don’t drink it all.

Yet more fresh rosemary, loosely chopped, for garnish. Optional.

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Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Put your thawed pork loin on a clean surface.

In a small bowl, mix the garlic, rosemary, salt, and pepper together. I do this with my hands. This recipe is hands on. The garlic juice should be enough to make this into a chunky paste, but if not, dry-ish works. You can also add a very little olive oil.

Rub the loin all over with your mixture, and when you’re done (and try to use all of the mixture) put the loin fat-side down in a baking pan.

Into the oven it goes. A friend of mine rotates (or more like revolves) the loin every few minutes, and bastes over the course of cooking. I have no time for that. No, pour yourself a nice glass of the white wine. Rosemary the herb reminds me of Rosemary Clooney, so sometimes I bring up her version of “Mambo Italiano” and mambo a little with my dog. He’s a very enthusiastic dancer, especially when he smells meat in the oven.

After a half hour of this take a big pair of tongs and roll the loin over. Keep the loin in there for another half-hour. When time’s up, test the loin by sticking a fork in the center. The juice that comes out should be watery or very slightly pink. When in doubt keep cooking. Better a slightly dry loin than a slightly lethal one. If you have a meat thermometer now would be the time to use it. It should register at least 150 degrees. AT LEAST. But not too much more than that.

Remove pan from oven, place on stove, and put your pork loin on a platter and let it rest. Do you see all those bits left behind in your pan? Splash some wine into the pan. This is “deglazing.”  Scrape the bits with a wooden spoon and mix with the wine. 

Slice the loin and let the slices fall like dominos. Spoon your wine/bits sauce over your porcine dominoes, toss on some more rosemary if you want, and serve.

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For the Brussels Sprouts

1 lb. (! For two. Don’t try to pass this off to the dog) Brussels sprouts, with the ends chopped off, cleaned and halved

Enough olive oil to gently coat the sprouts, maybe 2 or 3 tbs.

A little garlic powder

A little onion powder

5 oz. store-bought grated parmesan cheese (see note)

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Put the Brussels sprouts in a big bowl. Add olive oil gradually and stir around with a spoon. When it looks like all your sprouts got a little on the outside, but not too much, stop pouring. You don’t want them to get soggy.

Now, using your pandemic-related supply of garlic powder and onion powder (shelf stable and a long shelf life) shake some of each over the sprouts and stir. This shouldn’t be a coating, more like a suggestion.

NOTE: I recommend 5 ounces of store-bought grated parmesan cheese because that’s a very common size the tubs come in and we usually have one somewhere for emergency use only. If you have more it will come in handy. Add 5 ounces, more if you want, but it should stick to your sprouts.

Spoon your sprouts onto a baking sheet. Put into a preheated over at 400 degrees and let roast for about 30 minutes. Try to turn them or maybe shake the sheet (that sounds naughty) at least once or twice so they don’t burn. They may well take less than 30 minutes so keep an eye on them.

When they’re done pull them out and sprinkle more parmesan over them if you have any.

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20 Comments

  1. I made the Carnivore some roasted Brussels sprouts Sunday evening (his first time eating them). They were missing something, he tells me (from his experience of eating them this one time). And now I see what it was, the onion and garlic powder! Yes, I will torture him again with the sprouts – but I bet that the Cousin M version will be tastier.

    • back when i still lived at me parents house we had a refugee living with us..he’d never seen sprouts before
      called them bonzai cabbages
      now i call them that often as not
      (fwiw tho…i love sprouts…i usually just melt some butter on them tho)

    • The Better Half became obsessed with Brussels sprouts some time ago. I think his/our (I’ve since left the practice) doctor told him it was some kind of superfood. One evening he came home with a bag.  “Mattie? We should eat more Brussels sprouts!” “You’ve been talking to our quack doctor again.” “He says they’re a good source of–” “And I’m sure he’s right. Have you ever had them before? The only person I know who ever served them was one of my grandmothers, and she boiled them. There must be another way. We’re not impoverished and scraping by in WWII Europe or anything. Not that she was, she–” 
       
      So I looked around and found you could season and roast them and they wouldn’t taste like tree bark you had scraped off in desperation circa 1943 in northern Europe.

      • Boiled Brussels sprouts are gross. Pickled Brussels sprouts are gross. Roasted, seared, or fried Brussels sprouts are amazing.
         
        I like the generous parmesan. I’ll be trying it out. 

    • Honestly I love them roasted with just olive oil, salt, and pepper, but you can play with a lot of different spice mixes for them. I recently made a version for Thanksgiving that was really good: garlic powder, smoked paprika, thyme, cayenne, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, and a splash of maple syrup. The maple syrup is a nice addition because they get sorta caramelized. 
       
      I don’t know if I’ve done them with parmesan though, which feels like an oversight. Sounds delicious. 

    • All my guys, even the picky ones, will eat Brussels sprouts when I roast them. I just use a smidge of olive oil, a sprinkle of black pepper, and garlic salt, and then roast until they brown on the edges.

  2. Well I’m impressed by your Viking gas stove! And your recipe. Not to mention your dog’s ability to mambo, mine can barely manage a simple waltz.

    • The Omnivorous Beast is very well behaved when I cook but sometimes I get bored and The Better Half is, as always, working, tapping at the keyboard, so when he’s not on one of the dreaded Zoom calls or on the phone the hound and I mambo. I take one step forward and he takes one step back. I take one step back and he takes one step forward. After a few rounds of this I turn my back to him, then face him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, I don’t think, but he’ll often turn his rump to me and then face me. That’s essentially the mambo, except when a sane person attempts this they hold hands with their dance partner and only release when they do the turns.
       
      I wish “The Ed Sullivan Show” or Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” were still on the air. I think you can possibly get a lot of dogs to do this.

      • OMG, I would love to see this, lol. I will sometimes dance with Fanny, Bobby Hill, and  Ladybird style. Which is just dragging my poor girl for a few steps with her front paws on my shoulder. 

    • The Omnivorous Beast is very well behaved when I cook but sometimes I get bored and The Better Half is, as always, working, tapping at the keyboard, so when he’s not on one of the dreaded Zoom calls or on the phone the hound and I mambo. I take one step forward and he takes one step back. I take one step back and he takes one step forward. After a few rounds of this I turn my back to him, then face him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, I don’t think, but he’ll often turn his rump to me and then face me. That’s essentially the mambo, except when a sane person attempts this they hold hands with their dance partner and only release when they do the turns.
       
      I wish “The Ed Sullivan Show” or Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” were still on the air. We’d be stars. I think you can possibly get a lot of dogs to do this.

  3. I have to admit that, in my book, a little rosemary goes a loooong way. I made this “autumn stew” a few years ago that had pork, potatoes, butternut squash chunks, and a bunch of other stuff in it, including apple cider (I wish I could remember, but it was one of my “throw it all together and see what happens” specials), and I put 2, maybe 3, pinches of rubbed rosemary in… and that was practically all I could taste. The others raved about it, but to me, it tasted like chewing on a pine branch. 
     
    I do love me some roasted Brussels sprouts, though!

    • I totally agree about the rosemary. We happen to like it but it can overwhelm. If you use it as a coating, as with the pork loin, that quiets it down quite a bit. If you use it as an intrinsic part, like in your stew, it becomes a “flavor bully.” 

  4.  I’ve always liked brussel sprouts, even the poorly cooked ones.  As a kid, I never got the thing on tv where everyone would groan at the mention of brussel sprouts.
    I’ve been doing the roasting them thing, because that’s not terribly difficult, and I can usually throw them in a pyrex pan with some sausages or chicken breasts or something, and end up with something vaguely resembling a peoplefoodmeal, but without excessive prep and cleaning.  I’ve mostly just been doing a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper, and sometimes some shaker parm.  Next time I pick some up to cook, I’ll try some with onion and garlic powder.
    Thanks!

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