Recipe for Bourbon Pork Tenderloin

I was asked to post my favorite bourbon recipe. I hesitated, because I don't cook with bourbon very often, but this is one I love, and it's quite simple. It's appropriate that the meat is pork, since pig in all its forms is highly favored in bourbon country.

I prefer a simple and straightforward rye-recipe bourbon for cooking, but use whatever you like. I haven't used rye whiskey in this recipe but it would probably be great.

Ingredients:

Two whole pork tenderloins (1 to 1½ pounds each)
1 ½ cup bourbon whiskey
1 ½ cup orange juice
5 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
Crushed red pepper to taste
Salt to taste
Fresh cracked black pepper to taste
1 tbsp butter

Directions:

Combine all ingredients except the meat and butter. Reserve one cup of the liquid for sauce and use the rest as marinade.

Pierce the meat with a fork and marinate it for at least one hour.

Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees.

Discard the used marinade and roast the meat, uncovered, for about 1 hour and 45 minutes, until done. Baste occasionally with the reserved marinade.

In a saucepan, boil the rest of the reserved marinade until it is reduced by about half. Finish with butter. Serve as a sauce.

Let the meat rest for at least ten minutes after removing it from the oven. Cut into medallions ¾” to 1” thick.

Country Ham: Another Great Kentucky Product.

I call the above “a baggie of bliss.” Many convenience stores in Kentucky sell them at the cash register. It’s just a slice of Kentucky country ham between two pieces of white bread, and it is sublime.

Although bourbon whiskey is Kentucky’s best known consumable, it’s not the only Kentucky product that I crave. I’ve written before about other local specialties such as the Hot Brown Sandwich. Today I rise in praise of Kentucky country ham.

Country ham is a characteristic Southern food and not limited to Kentucky, but most of my experience has been with the Kentucky version. Kentucky country ham is salt-cured and its saltiness is what you notice first. It’s too much for some people. But behind the salt there is a wonderful, rich flavor that quickly spoils you for any other type of ham.

Most of the country ham producers in Kentucky are small and family-owned. It’s a good product for mail order because it doesn’t have to be refrigerated. You can buy everything from packages of ‘biscuit slices’ up to whole hams. Finchville Farms is a brand I can usually pick up at Kroger’s in Kentucky when I’m visiting there and it’s the one I’ve enjoyed most recently, but there are many others that are just as good. Country ham is also surprisingly inexpensive.

Although country ham doesn’t have to be refrigerated it is raw and needs to be cooked before eating. I always get slices, which can be fried in a hot, dry skillet in a few minutes, just until the meat starts to brown. Don’t overcook, because it gets tough if you do.

Although it’s very simple, it took me a while to master red eye gravy, mostly because I kept expecting it to be something it’s not. After you finish cooking the ham, remove it from the skillet and add a small amount of water to deglaze the skillet. Some people use coffee instead. Use a spoon or spatula to loosen the flavorful residue and keep stirring it as the liquid reduces. It will thicken only slightly. Then pour it over the ham. It’s not gravy in the normal sense. Mostly it’s used to enhance the flavor of the meat while also giving it back some of its moisture, making it more tender.

Kentucky country ham and Kentucky bourbon complement each other well because both are highly flavorful. Kentucky country ham is usually eaten at breakfast, but finger sandwiches of country ham tucked inside beaten biscuits are popular at parties. Kurtz’s Restaurant, in Bardstown, offers a dinner of country ham and fried chicken that is hard to resist.

Carnivore Carnival 2009

A friend of mine in Houston has a party about this time every year called Carnivore Carnival. Here is what typically is on the board.

Two 40-pound hogs
200 hand made chicken/pork/beef enchilladas with homemade sauces
Smoked leg of lamb
Red Deer tenderloins (grilled)
Pasta salad
Smoked chickens
Smoked rib eye roasts

Beer, wine, whiskey

How did pasta salad get in there?

Bourbon and Country Ham.

Of course they are perfect together. You can't believe you had to be told, but you did. It was Woodford Reserve Resident Chef Ouita Michel who enlightened you. Pairing food with American whiskey is tricky because the whiskey is so flavorful, it's hard to find foods that can stand up to it. Barbeque with a young rye or rye-recipe bourbon has always seemed the perfect pairing, but Ouita serves a fine, Kentucky country ham that could stand with any jamón serrano and it ideally complements the softer and more elegant bourbon made by her employer.

Goat cheese, fresh or aged, also very nice.

As Kentucky vies to be the Napa Valley of American whiskey, sophisticated locavore cuisine is a natural development. There was nothing like Ouita's food, or the food at Proof on Main, Limestone, or Corbett's, (all in Louisville) when I lived there 20 years ago. Now that's pretty much what fine dining means.

If you have trouble finding good country ham in the big city, Meachams, in Western Kentucky, is a good mail order source. With "ham" in their name, how could they not be?