As some of you may know, I have been really into grilling and trying new recipes since I got my gas grill about this time last year. Well, I wanted to try something different with pork, and here is what I found over at Barbeque University (
http://www.bbqu.net/). This is a show that comes on PBS and has some great grilling recipes. This recipe is for Coffee Crusted Pork Tenderloins. The link to the recipe is
here. Essentially, it is a coffee based rub and covered with a "red eye barbeque sauce." The sauce, like the tenderloins is heavily flavored with coffee. If you don't like coffee, then you might still like the recipe, because the coffee adds a distinct flavor, but mixes really well in the bbq sauce. I have never eaten nor made a sauce or rub based on coffee. Both were really good, but the bbq sauce was excellent. I was really surprised with how it came out. I would recommend just making the sauce if you're not about making the tenderloins. The sauce would go great with any pork dish I think, but really work well with the tenderloins as called for in the recipe. The sauce had a certain "kick" that must come from the coffee, paprika, and onions coming together. Along with the tenderloins was a side of corn on the cobb. The corn was shucked, rubbed with butter, rolled in foil, and grilled. After I took the corn off the grill, I sliced a lime and squeezed it all over the corn. I then sprinkled seasoned salt. The lime juice makes the salt stick to the corn. The sweet and spicy corn played really well with the spicy-ness of the pork and bbq sauce.
More pictures of my handy-work and my rating after the jump.
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| This is the pork marinating. I did this for two nights. |
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| Just off the grill. |
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| With the sauce and side. |
I will rank the food
that I made in four categories: Time (1=Very Short 10=Very Long), Difficulty (1=Very Easy; 10=Very Difficult), Taste (1=Turrible; 10=Excellent), Uniqueness (1=Very Unique; 10 Everyone's Done It).
Time: 4 I marinated this for much longer than is required. Four hours in the rub should be enough, unless you just have some extra time a day or two before. Actual cooking time was about 45-60mins.
Difficulty: 6 It is hard to cook pork correctly in my opinion. However, this could just be because I'm not an expert griller.
Taste: 8 This is a good-to-great tasting dish. A "10" has to absolutely blow my mind and this didn't do it. I would still highly recommend this dish though. I was pleased with the way it came out, in particular, the sauce was awesome.
Uniqueness: 3 Almost everyone tries to grill a big pork dish at least once, but most people still don't do it often. I rarely hear people say they are grilling pork tenderloins. Also, the coffee based sauce is pretty original. So, I think it would be considered pretty...pretty...pretty unique.
If you decide to try it, let me know how it comes out.
I have to say when I saw coffee and pork it sounded strange. I felt better when you said you don't have to like coffee to like the dish. By the end I was pretty damn hungry. I have some porkchops that I am gonna try the sauce on
ReplyDeleteLooking at the picture, it seems like you overcooked the tenderloin. Of course this varies greatly from person to person, but I love my meat (all of them!) rare. In the case of a pork tenderloin, I would want the meat to have a nice pink tone to it all, with some darker juices running out (stop what you are thinking Tidwell). The keys to cooking on a grill are: 1.) NEVER LEAVE THE GRILL! People tend to cook differently when grilling for whatever reason. If you were cooking on the stove, you probably would never leave the meat unattended, but when you throw it on the grill, there is a very good chance you close the lid and walk away, and this of course is how things get burned, especially if you are drinking. 2.) Get a meat thermometer, and learn to use it. Meat continues to cook even after you take it off the grill, stove, oven, etc. so account for this. It takes a bit of trial and error. But for chicken, which needs to get to the 160 range (they say 165 but I think thats too dry) I would take it off the grill around 150-155. For a pork tenderloin, I would pull that baby off around 140. I would say meats rise about 5-10 degrees on average after being taken away from the heat. Oh, and never cover meat with anything after taking off, especially foil, as this will further the cooking. If you have to do this, put it in the oven with it turned on as low as 150 degrees to keep from drying out your food.
ReplyDeleteAnywho, good write up Heath, thanks for throwing in some mix.
Tidwell, let me know how the sauce works for ya.
I prefer mine medium well. The outside looks a little burnt, but it is because of the coffee grounds.
ReplyDeleteI love where the blog is going.
ReplyDeleteThrow in some chili powder and make a coffee-chili rub.
ReplyDelete