Sous vide grilled pork loin with chutney glaze

This is the pork dish I made for Falltacular yesterday; it turned out really well. Since a lot of people wanted the recipe, here’s the basic info:

1. Take a standard package of pork loin (usually two packed in one bag), and trim the loins of all silver skin and any substantial layers of fat.

2. Brine the pork loins for up to 24 hours in a 1.5% salt solution.

3. After brining, use towels to completely dry the pork loins.

4. Once dry, sear both sides of each pork loin over very high heat for about 1-2 minutes–just enough to brown the outside layers.

5. Place the pork loins in a plastic bag with a little olive oil, remove all the excess air, and seal the bag.

6. In a sous vide bath pre-heated to 135 degrees (you can go a little higher if you want), cook the pork loins for about three hours.

7. Place the bag in cold water to stop the cooking process. You can then put the pork loins in the fridge to hold them for a day before the final cooking.

8. When ready to grill at the end, let the pork loins warm up to near room temperature and pat thoroughly dry.

9. If you’re not putting anything on them, you can do a final sear on both sides on high heat. If you’re using a glaze with sugar, do the final cook away from
   the highest flames so you don’t burn the glaze.

10. For yesterday’s glaze, I took a jar of mango chutney and put it in a saucepan with fresh lemon juice and S&P. I let it simmer for at least 5 minutes, and used an immersion blender to make it smooth. I then put the glaze on the pork loins before the final grilling, adding a bit of additional glaze after the loins had been cooking for a while. Take off the grill and let the pork loins rest briefly. Then slice small medallions and serve immediately.

So the whole process takes a few days, but the brining and sous vide cooking yield a very tender & moist pork loin.

Bruce

Bruce- saw this- but do you think brining is necessary?

I have never used sous vide, so this is a real honest question.
How much different does this taste compared to just grilling, then adding the chutney for the last few minutes of grill time?Thanks

I’ll assume the pork did not come in pre-treated. Better cooks than me recommend a 5% salt brine why 1.5%?

Necessary? No. Desirable? Yes. I’ve been brining proteins like chicken, turkey & pork for a while now, and the difference between brined and unbrined
meat is noticeable.

If you’re interested, try a side-by-side comparison. Since you get 2 pork loins in that standard package, brine one and don’t brine the other.
Then sous vide them and serve them to friends/family as an A/B and ask them if they notice a difference.

Bruce

I saw a recipe that suggested 1.5%, so I decided to give it a spin. I think you can go with a higher %, but then you don’t necessarily need to
go 24 hours. When I brine chicken breasts, I’ll often use a higher salt solution but only for a few hours…

Bruce

Mark–The main reason I did the sous vide this time is that we were grilling a TON of food at Falltacular, and it’s very difficult to carefully monitor the
cooking time/temp. of each piece of meat that goes on the grill. So one of the advantages of sous vide is that you basically cook the protein ahead of time
and then keep it cold until you finish it on the grill at the end.

Beyond the logistics, one of the normal main advantages of sous vide is that you get an even amount of doneness on the protein. Depending on what/how
you’re cooking, and what else is going on, it may be a challenge to get just the right degree of doneness on the inside without burning the exterior. So
with pork loin, for example, it’s usually a rather lean piece of meat. When you throw it on the grill, it’s easy to overcook (yielding a tough,
dried-out piece of meat). With the sous vide, it gently cooks the meat all the way through–it’s very difficult to overcook if you follow the time/temp. recommendations. So then you can just grill it quickly at the end to get the exterior you want without overcooking the interior.

Bruce

Thanks for the explanation, Bruce.

I really enjoyed the pork loins that Bruce made. In addition, I received a sous vide “machine” for Christmas that I have not yet used. Very thankful for all the tips.

On another level, I am still not totally sold on brining. Last Thanksgiving, I did two 12 pound turkeys on my Traeger smoker/grill. I brined one and not the other…Voting on the favorite came out 50/50.

Cheers!
Marshall

Marshall–My experience with turkey is that brining increases the range of cooking times/temps that you can use before the turkey breast gets overcooked and
dries out. When you’re cooking a large piece of protein–like a 12 pound turkey–it can be a challenge to nail the exact sweet spot of cooking. Because the turkey cooks from the outside in, you have to cook the turkey for a long time to get the interior cooked to a safe temperature. If you don’t hit the exact sweet spot, it’s easy to overcook the turkey breast by the time the interior is cooked. With brining, it seems to expand the “sweet spot,” at least in my experience.

Bruce

Trying putting a couple of tablespoons of bacon fat in the sous vide bag with the pork loin.

How much does the bacon fat change the flavor of the pork loin? For example, if I’m using a chutney or fruit glaze, I’m not sure I would want a
strong bacon fat flavor underneath.

Bruce

Not much, really. Just makes it a little richer tasting, with a touch of smoke. Pork loin has so little taste on its own, I like to give it a boost.

Bruce: Those are good points but the Traeger did an excellent job with keeping the birds moist. The comments were probably about the different flavor (herb) profiles that i used.


Cheers!
Marshall

No input re brining, but a tip. Bought a sous vide a couple of years ago, used it maybe twice and put it away. Vacuuming meats with any amount of fat and/or moisture has a high level of difficulty. We recently tried putting the meat in a large ziplock, lapping the edge over the side of the sous vide or a rack, and clipping it. Works just fine.

The meat turns out quite moist and tender. Wonderful for pork loin and chops, but also chicken, steak etc.

Now we use the sous vide at least once a week, along with our other “new” gadget, the Instant Pot.

A recent Cooks Illustrated article recommended slicing it lengthwise, seasoning, and then rolling it back up in order to distribute the seasoning throughout. I hope to give it a try some time soon.

I quickly read that as “wonderful for…children, steak etc.” and thought we were going in a very different direction!

Back to your comments on ziplocs. You don’t have to use one of the vacuum devices; you can use a ziploc type bag, submerge it in water,
and then squeeze out the air.

But I have no issue with using the vacuum sealers either.

Bruce

Thanks for the note, Bruce. I prepared a pork loin sous vide last night with a dry “Bengali” rub - 3 hours at 139.5 deg. Seared with a Searzall, sliced and served - perfect temp for my family.

Question to anyone re: brining and sous vide. From my reading, I understood that salting meat that is being sous vide for cooks over 2 hours essentially had the same effect as brining. If brining first then seasoning with salt for the sous vide, doesn’t it come out overly salty? Just curious. TIA.

One tip if you are going to have liquid in the bag and want to vacuum seal, just freeze the liquid first. Then the vacuum doesn’t suck it out and cause a weak seal. This such a simple thing that I never thought of on my own, but completely solved the problem with freezing stock. Of course if you have a chamber vacuum sealer, the issue doesn’t exist.

I generally would not brine and then use salt with the sous vide as well.

Bruce