Marinated with a herb and garlic off the shelf then grilled.

A different way is to cut slices, bash them thin, make a fresh basil pesto and make little sandwiches. Fry in a hot pan. Nice with a salad or medly of green veg.

Still remember the day I was in the meat department at Sam’s Club, and all their 2-packs of pork tenderloin were mismarked for $1.39/lb. At the time I think the actual price was $4.39/lb. I left with several.👍🏻

Slather it in a thick mix of dijon, olive ol, salt and thyme. Let it sit in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. Roast it in on a sheet pan in the oven. Let it sit for ten minutes. Eat it.

Kendrah, how long and at what temp do you do yours?

For people who smoke meat pork tenderloin is a favorite. I use a cure in the fridge and then smoke. I wont go into details because how many of you have a smoke house? It is sliced and served as cold cuts.

patriciae

Patriciae, your post reminded me that I used to fix a tenderloin Chinese restaurant style, cooked, then when cold, sliced and dipped in hot mustard and sesame seeds. It was marinated in something that made it pink on the outside, but it’s been too many years ago and I can’t look it up right now.

Annie, FWIW, posting these links if they help with temp and time.

Oven Roasted Pork Tenderloin

7 Methods for Cooking Pork Tenderloin

Patriciae,

I have an electric smoker. Could I smoke a tenderloin with your recipe in that?

Olychick,

I think the ingredient you have in mind is

FERMENTED TRADITIONAL BEAN CURD AS COOKING SAUCE

I think this is what Chinese often use on Char siu.

I think I have some in the fridge. Reddish color.

🔸https://www.cocoislandmart.com/products/wangzhihe-fermented-traditional-bean-curd-as-cooking-sauce-12-oz-340g?variant=46116495589615&country=US&currency=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&utm_campaign=gs-2020-09-06&utm_source=google&utm_medium=smart_campaign&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=17510298430&gbraid=0AAAAACWPscFO31qMvi9ajS5pHCLBffFbq&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvYDlt_7okAMVv19HAR3orykREAQYAyABEgJExfD_BwE

Thanks! I saw some recipes that called for that or red food coloring! I have no memory of using either, but it's been at least 40 years since I last made it. Where we were living didn't have an Asian grocery at the time, tho I shopped in Seattle frequently and could have purchased it there. A mystery, but now I am craving it!

Thanks chloebud, esp for that link on the 7 methods. Most helpful.

Oly, here is a link for char siu

🔸 https://jennskitchendiary.com/char-siu-recipe/

or

🔸 https://allwaysdelicious.com/char-siu/?fbclid=IwAR11R3Bu6Ez8VfpDjvbvbXehqvow1GXkxMUEZTOGDONBprhTFl-j3nmSyrQ

You can make it without the fermented bean curd. The most common cut of pork used is shoulder (butt).

If you cook Chinese food often, it’s helpful to have some char siu on hand—soups, fried rice, other dishes.

Well, I made one tonight. It was tender and juicy. I oven roasted it along with sweet potatoes and broccoli. Here's the recipe: https://www.seriouseats.com/sheet-pan-pork-tenderloin-dinner-recipe-8781164

Thank you for all your insights and encouragement. Most appreciated. They were on sale so I now have 3 more in the freezer.

👍🏻!

@petalique thanks for the link. Interesting info about that cut of pork being the most common. I don't recall ever having anything but a tenderloin served in a Chinese restaurant. I'm pretty sure that's what I used to fix, too. The style I'm thinking of wasn't saucy at all, but almost like a dry rub - but probably marinated, sliced and served cold, eaten with your fingers, dipped in very spicy Chinese mustard and then in toasted sesame seeds that stick to the mustard.

Understand. Most of the Char siu I’ve had looks like it had a dried lacquer over the surface. I can see where the marinade went into the pork roast. No sauce. This is the type that gets used (pieces) in fried rice, spring rolls, and so on.

I’ve made it this way. I’ll try to find a photo.

Annie D, that sheet parn dinner looks good.

Olychick, I’m back.

You can make Char Siu with any cut of pork. Traditionally, pork butt/shoulder is used. No reason you could not make it with tenderloin.

I looked at several recipes and invariably pork butt or shoulder was used.

One of my favorite chefs is Pailin (Pailin’s Kitchen), but I have many favorites.

Below is how Pailin’s Char Siu looks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPZ5fw35bc4

And below are more images from other chefs (URL on image). All of the recipes seem genuine and traditional.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V6CDqxEkQk

Above done with sous vide technique

Mandy’s at Better Than Take-Out, Souped Up Recipes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umFzNSE194c

Mandy’s at Better Than Take-Out, Souped Up Recipes (I love Mandy)

Petalique, yes you can. I will look up the porportions for you.

patriciae

I season it well with whatever seasonings I have on, the other day it was Kinders buttery steakhouse. let sit in fridge overnight. I seared in olive oil and butter, finished in oven and then made a pan sauce. It was so good

Char Siu pork is often rather dry, at least when I have it in restaurants. Char Siu + pork tenderloin seems like a good candidate for sous vide. I was thinking make a marinade with plenty of tangy-sweet stuff and Five Spice/star anise, skip the red food coloring in favor of red beet juice. Marinate overnight, then 4 hr sous vide at 130F in the marinade. Pour off marinade and cook down to glaze. Dry and chill then brown meat, adding sesame oil at the end. Finish with glaze, slice, serve. That's entirely talking out of my hat, I've never tried making this, but seems like a project for this weekend!

Portland is VERY close. (To Olympia ;-)

My Char Siu tenderloin pork was not that successful. The marinade had a good flavor and cooked down into a nice glaze, but did not penetrate much into the meat despite marinating overnight and four hours sous vide in the marinade. Also, I cooked the pork at 127.5F which resulted in very tender meat but I think a little higher temp would have been better. I tried an emergency 10 min at 350F in Wall-E and that got the texture close to right, at least I thought. I didn’t do a good job of searing either, but that was more of a minor flub.

I have half of the tenderloin left, and will try again. I think I’ll prick the meat all over, in hopes of getting more marinade penetration, and sous vide at 135F.

On the positive side, I finally found a use for the bag of beet powder I bought for some experiments in supercharged overnight oats. A friend claims to have lost weight and regained youth through a breakfast regimen consisting of a heavily supplemented overnight oat recipe so complicated that he had to send it in a spreadsheet, so abstruse that it took a week of ordering from multiple places to assemble the ingredients, and so precious that each serving worked out to cost $8. My interest in the stuff lasted a week, and now I have all these weirdo powders that I have to use up. I guess the next tuna salad is going to be so probiotic it swims.

Sous vide seems to be the now many years old technique many hail as being the latest sensation, that has never become the latest sensation. Apparently for a number of reasons.

John Liu, is that a tenderloin? To me, it looks large like a LOIN? Remember, that a loin is white meat and the tenderloin is dark meat. They are not the same thing. Maybe the photo just makes the meat look large like a loin?

I was going to say the same thing arkansas girl. Pork tenderloin on the left, a pork loin on the right. Different cut of meat.

I suspect John Liu that you would've gotten better "penetration" with the tenderloin as it's much smaller in diameter...more surface area to absorb the marinade.

Right, they aren't interchangeable. It's like the different between chicken breast and chicken thighs.

Oh DUH! Shows how little I cook pork tenderloin. Ok, I’ll get some of the real stuff and try.

John, to be fair, I had no idea what a pork tenderloin was until a few years ago. I have tried to explain it my sister too and she hasn't been able to figure it out yet...HEEHEE!

Weird..I've been grilling pork tenderloins for decades. I've smoked a few loins but prefer pork butt to loin.

I sometimes buy them pre-marinated in teriyaki or italian seasoning or just use a dry rub. Grill for about 30 minutes total on medium-high heat (~400) turning 4 times to sear all sides. They will stick to the grill so It's important to oil the grill first. I take them off at 140F on the thick end and let rest for 10 minutes.

I’m guessing lots of people get the loin and tenderloin confused. I’ve bought tenderloins for many years since I prefer them over loins. I’ll still occasionally call them ”loins.”

The few times I cook pork loin, I always make a gravy/sauce of some sort to serve with it because it's usually a bit dry. Tenderloin doesn't need that in my experiences.

I use pork LOIN slices for the pounded with a meat mallet, dipped in egg, then flour and maybe bread crumbs for schnitzel, German or Southern . Sometimes smothered in a gravy.

I use the TENDERloins for grilled on stove top or grill. Quick cooked.

They as different as a pork rib is from a Boston butt pork roast or a pig ear, or a ham or whatever cut of pork tou can think of.

" They will stick to the grill so It's important to oil the grill first. "

This may be because the grill grates aren't hot enough or the meat hasn't been in place long enough for the hold to release on its own. Oil helps but I've found it's really a matter of time and temperature. The same is true indoors on a range top.

I have just run of the mill units - a Weber 3-burner gas grill and a Weber charcoal kettle. I find that no matter how long or high I let it preheat, the gas grill doesn't get hot enough at the grill level to properly sear meat. The grill pattern is telling - rather than the familiar dark lines from the points of grill contact and light color in between, the pattern with the gas grill is the opposite - the grill contact lines are the lighter area and in-between is where it's darker.

There are gas grills on the market now that have small, higher temp searing areas. Short of getting one of those, I find the best way to sear meat is to put a cast iron skillet on the grill and let it get very hot before beginning to cook the meat.

With my charcoal grill, anything and everything is possible and easy. With gas, not so much.

Elmer sous vide cooking is great and still going strong for very good reasons. It's a steep learning curve - worth your time to learn and experiment with.

The concepts started in the 18th C., and the current method is from the 1970's. Not exactly a fad.

https://www.amazon.ca/Under-Pressure-Cooking-Sous-Vide/dp/1579653510

My son-in-law recommends this book. ^^^^

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/thomas-keller-teaches-cooking-techniques-iii-seafood-sous-vide-and-desserts/chapters/sous-vide-cooking-getting-started

I personally think sous vide is more applicable to a restaurant, where you have 15 minutes to serve something that takes 4 or 8 hours to cook. There’s different ways to handle that, SV is one.

For home cooks, I find sous vide useful on occasion. Sometimes for logistical reasons. For example, suppose I am having a summer grill get together and want to cook four slabs of ribs; I don’t have a smoker, my pressure cooker can’t fit more than one slab, I need my oven for something else; I can use a cooler to SV the slabs then finish them on the grill. Other times for cooking reasons, like to cook that loin evenly to a low internal temp. I guess I use my SV sticks once a month.

At DD’s future cafe, we are going to try to be a ”hoodless kitchen“, at least at first. So if there’s meat to be cooked, we might use the SV then finish in oven/on hob. Or shrug and buy precooked meat. I don’t know.

I'm curious to know, John, how long foods cooked in a sous vide way can be held at their final cooking temperature? Do they start to degrade in any way as time passes?

I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. For something like ribs, I can cook them ahead, slather on more sauce, and keep them covered and warm in an over at an appropriate low temp for a good while. I have two, one large, one smaller but a standard size.

Not John, but whole slabs of meat can hold for several days. Poultry can go for a few hours then goes mushy. ETA: But it can also be cooked a couple of days ahead and refrigerated in the vacuum sealed bag, then brought back to temperature to serve. I haven't done this, but the texture is supposed to be unaffected.

Like John, my best use for sous vide is essential catering--home cooking for multitudes--but I've had phenomenal results. Some in CF have found it an elegant way to just cook for the family. E.g., you can make everyone's steak the exact level of doneness they prefer, in one vessel. I use the circulator to make a simple cheese that can no longer be bought, for a beloved traditional dish. The milk has to be held at temperature for 12 hrs. and this is a simple, elegant way. Etc. It's just a tool, like a pressure cooker or steamer, but a good one.

I also like cooking bacon SV, in the original plastic package. Most of the fat renders, you pour out the liquid fat, the resulting cooked bacon can be separated into individual slices and frozen, then it takes less than a minute to crisp it up in a pan or oven. But we don't eat much bacon anymore.

John, your comments have been informative and I appreciate the effort.

Just now, you reminded me about the initial turn-off reaction I had to the sous vide process- having food at whatever warmish temperature in contact with plastic.

It's a personal preference. We don't store food in plastic, don't microwave in plastic, don't use submersible plastic packaging, and avoid contact with anything that's not cold with plastic. We have no plastic cups (other than for cold drinks outside), plates, or utensils either. I know there's no choice about how food is sold in stores but after that, person preferences can prevail.

Plastic is certainly the downside of sous vide. It's just so useful - especially when you're cooking for a crowd.

Things like fish are perfect every time.

I like to prepare meat to take camping. It's easy to have something like chicken thighs cooked that only need crisping in a pan.

" Plastic is certainly the downside of sous vide "

Okay, fair enough. I understand how you see it and I get it.

This comment reminds me of a caricature of a large system software salesman talking to a customer and offering a re-directing understatement:

"Oh no, that's not a bug. That's a feature! You maybe didn't expect that misbehavior, but it does that intentionally. Though, we're removing that feature from the next bug-fixing version that will be released next month.

Your "downside" is someone else's "deal breaker". No worries.

I have a question though, one that won't warm me up to trying it (pun intended) but something that occurred to me.

The old manta of "keep foods either cold, or hot, not in-between" would seem to stumble a bit in the sous vide process. Taking something at refrigerator temperature and warming it to a low to mid-100s F finished cooking temp over hours and hours makes it spend a lot of time at the in-between temperatures. Is that of any concern from a safe food handling perspective?

No. It's fine. There's a time/temperature tradeoff for the bacteria killing part of cooking. There are charts from scientists. The higher the temperature the quicker it happens, as you might expect. All slow cooking relies on this. The original crockpot was meant to go for over 8 hrs. on lo, which was totally safe, but as more people who weren't leaving the house for work and school run were using it just because it did well with the recipes, they started getting impatient and deciding if it looked and tasted good, it was done at 5 hrs. But it wasn't. They got sick. A regulation or law was set forth requiring manufacturers to make a hotter lo temperature. Ruined the recipes for the ones following the rules, and added the abysmal keep warm. You get to decide your own time and temp with sous vide. You could even put a sealed crock in your water bath with your circulator, and make the old crock pot recipes (but do have a care about the evaporation if you're leaving the house for ten hours).

Re plastic, if you were inclined to want to get a circulator, there are reusable silicone bags which don't have the problems that plastic does. I've also seen something I think was latex coated. You also can use the circulator and even temperatre without putting the food under pressure, like I do for my cheese, or like the crock I mentioned. People put little fiddly things in open jars. Others make cakes, custards, etc., also in jars, essentally a free-standing, perfect temperature, bain marie. Many call it the "water oven". I'm sure you could find a way to make it work, if you wanted. There's absolutely no need, unless the thought really appeals to you, but you needn't be stuck at the consideration of plastic.

pillog, I appreciate your taking the time to add more information to the topic. I'm pretty satisfied with having accumulated methods and equipment over the years through trial and error that work for us, for the kinds of things we want to prepare and how. Neither sous vide nor slow cookers factor into that but that's fine. I now know more than I did before and that's good. Thanks.

As far as slow cookers are concerned, there is a health risk I remember hearing about. There's a dangerous and potentially serious toxin present in beans that requires cooking at temperatures higher than slow cookers typically reach, to be destroyed. Maybe instructions for these devices include cautions about steps required so that preparations that include beans are safe to eat. I don't trust that most people read user guides much these days, the information can be found elsewhere.

Oh crap...I'm gonna die!

You're welcome. So here's some more info. When I read your second paragraph, I thought "red kidney beans", so I did a couple of searchers, and that really is the thing, though some other beans do have some of the same compound, and the authoritative ones rather transparently lump in all beans to keep fools from screwing up.

in fact, the original Crock Pot slow cooker was invented by a Jewish man who wanted a way to make the Sabbath cholent (a bean stew). In traditional, European Jewish practice (there are slight variations in other regions that I can't speak of off the top of my head) has it that you can't "cook" on the Sabbath, but you can start something cooking before the Sabbath starts at sundown, and leave it on a banked fire (you can't add more fuel) until you're ready to eat it. This satisfies the commandment not to cook while letting you eat warm food. Additionally, you can walk to your neighbors, but not go on a journey (i.e., the 1000 steps), and you can carry things around your home, but not away. And the horse gets Sabbath too, so you can't ride or drive. In the small towns, people lived near enough to the gathering place where services were held to not be making a "journey". This was usually in the town center.

So, they decided to mark the circumference around the gathering place that was "home" rather than away, and often marked it with an actual string, though in other places it would be roads and landmarks. They did this so they could also carry things. So, another big destination in the center was the bake house. On Fridays, after the baking was done, the bakers would bank and cover the fire well so it would smolder gently and be easy to revive after the Sabbath, and by being a bit warm, the ovens never got really cold. In fact, they stayed warm enough that they could slow cook. The men would bring their bean stew pots to the big baking oven on their way to Friday night services (the beginning of which starts before the Sabbath starts at Sundown (technically the afternoon service)). After the morning service on Saturday, they'd retrieve their bean pots and take them home for the main meal of the day. The beans and bits of meat and veg all cooked overnight and were warm and delicious at lunchtime.

The crockpot was designed to do the same thing. The legend of the designer is that it was an 18-hour, Lithuanian granny's recipe. Of course, then American housewives found all kinds of things to use it for... People don't get sick from slow cooking most beans, or I promise you these bean stews would have been forbidden. There may be some beans besides red kidney beans that are dangerous, but kidneys are the ones we always get warnings about, and most beans don't have this problem. I don't know, however, if there's a time/temp tradeoff for this toxin or if it's an absolute temperature level. The general recommendation is to boil all beans for ten minutes before slow cooking as a better safe than sorry thing, and some say they cook more evenly if you do. It's certainly a lot easier to adopt than knowing for sure which other beans, besides kidney, might be a problem. I have no idea if they did that back in the bakehouse days, but they could well have. It seems obvious that the stew would cook better if started on the fire at home, before banking for heating, and then letting it finish in the bakehouse. Early Crock Pot recipes do usually have you start the beans on the stove, but that seems more about the cookery than any thought of toxins..

You can cook in closed glass jars. I make crème brulée or petits pots au chocolat. The texture in any custard based dish is perfect as the eggs can't ever get to that granular stage. I haven't tried proteins like that...

Here's an interesting article about using glass https://food52.com/story/20028-how-to-use-glass-not-plastic-to-sous-vide-food