One of the first things I learned from my mother about cooking meat is that fat=flavor. If you have lean cuts of meat, you often need to do something to introduce fat back into the meat just to make it taste better and to help keep it from drying out.
Along those lines, here’s a trick you can use with a pork loin roast, a relatively lean cut, to bump up the flavor and keep it juicy. Just brown the roast first on the stovetop, then wrap it in strips of bacon to roast. As the roast cooks, the bacon will bathe it in flavor.
Bacon-wrapped Pork Roast Recipe
PrintIngredients
- 1 pork loin roast (about 1 1/2 pounds)
- Salt and pepper
- 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 Tbsp finely chopped fresh rosemary
- 1/4 lb bacon, thinly sliced
- 1 cup dry white wine
Method
1 Salt roast and let rest at room temp: About an hour before you intend to cook the roast, take it out of the refrigerator and sprinkle it with salt on all sides. Let it sit at room temp to take the chill off before you roast it.
2 Pre-heat oven to 375°F (190°C).
3 Sear roast on all sides on stovetop: Pat pork roast dry with paper towels. Sprinkle it with pepper on all sides and again with a little salt (you likely wiped off much of the earlier sprinkle of salt when you patted it dry.)
Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet on medium high heat. When the oil is shimmery hot, add the pork roast to the pan and brown it on all sides (don't move the roast until it has browned on one side). About 10 minutes. Remove the roast from the pan and set on a plate.
4 Rub roast with rosemary, wrap with bacon: Rub the pork roast all over with minced fresh rosemary. Wrap the roast in bacon strips, overlapping the strips if necessary. Tie the roast up with kitchen string to hold the bacon strips in place.
5 Roast in oven: Place the roast in a roasting pan and roast in the oven at 375°F (190°C), occasionally basting with the pan juices, until the internal temperature of the roast reaches 145°F (63°C) on a meat thermometer, about 35 to 40 minutes.
6 Tent with foil and let rest: When the roast has reached temperature, remove it from the oven and place it on a serving dish. Tent the roast with foil to keep it warm while it rests and while you make the pan sauce.
7 Make sauce with roast drippings: To make a sauce with the pan drippings, place the roasting pan on top of the stove on low heat. Pour white wine into the pan and start scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan with a flat edged metal or wood spatula.
Pour the scraped up drippings through a fine mesh sieve into a small saucepan.
Use a metal spoon to skim off excess fat. Heat until simmering, then remove from heat and pour into a gravy boat.
Serve the roast with the sauce from the pan drippings.
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Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family's recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.
Bacon-wrapped Pork Roast
Anna, you are so correct. Pork loin is our last choice when it comes to pork. We always use an internal temp device and take our pork out at 143 degrees internal. If you are serving chops make sure they are bone-in. It makes all the difference.
Loved this recipe, but do you have a recipe for a “Boiled Pork Shoulder”, I remember this from my youth at home. It made good cold pork sandwiches.
Thanks for the recipe! I bought a ton of lean pork loins (relatively cheap here) but couldn’t find a good way to prepare them. The bacon wrap really adds a ton of flavor and kept my roast nice and juicy! I’ll definitely have to add this to my weekly menu.
I have made this for several years and it is always a consistent hit.
Slice it 1/4 to 1/2 inch across the grain and serve it with a sauce, either the one described or some variation, such as with a bit of horseradish sauce, or add some juniper berries, or a dab of currant jam with sour cream. Pork loin or sirloin roasts are actually quite lean so remember that fat = flavor!
Thank you again Elise! This is a keeper. The roast had a wonderful flavor and was so moist. Better yet, we were actually able to make this on a weeknight!
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