Pork Tenderloin - Take 2

With 3 pork tenderloins in the freezer, no reason not to cook a couple more. This time we had a guest over, so we thought we'd try the chili rubbed pork tenderloin with blackberry sauce from the Big Green Egg Cook Book

The Recipe calls for 2 pork tenderloins, rubbed in 1 tbls of chili powder, salt and pepper. The pork wasn't 100% unfrozen yet, so I put the rub on a little early and let them thaw on the counter. The turned a nice dark red color as the chili powder soaked in.

While the tenderloins were thawing I made the black berry preserves. This was a little bit of an adventure, but it seemed to turn out alright in the end. The instructions said to melt sugar in a small sauce pan on the stove and caramelize. Once caramelized pour in blackberry preserves, balsamic vinegar and chicken stock. But when I poured in the liquid the caramelized sugar instantly hardened and turned into a candy like substance. Maybe it's supposed to do this, maybe not, but after some stirring and boiling then hardened sugar eventually melted back in. But it had me worried there for a little bit.

This recipe called for the tenderloin to be cooked over direct heat around 400 degrees. So I fired up the big green egg, plate setter removed and got it going. Yesterday was quite windy, so no issue with getting the egg up to temperature. 15 minutes in I was ready to go.

Put the tenderloin on for 5 minutes, then flipped as the recipe asked. My thermometer read 155, so I took it off, let rest for 5 minutes in tin foil and started to slice it up. A little too rare for my liking, so I threw it back on the egg for 5 more minutes. The thermometer was reading 200, which has me a bit worried, because there is no way that the meet was 200.

Second time off the BGE and it was just right. A little taste of the meat on the cutting board and the chili powder was overpowering and a little spicier then I had expected. When I served it with the black berry sauce though, the tastes complimented each other really well. I don't think I would have liked the pork without the black berry sauce.

Lessons learned tonight: Need to figure out how to deal with bowling sugar and cold liquids, half the recipe for the blackberry sauce (had way too much of it leftover) and look at calibrating my thermometer or look for a better placement in the meat. Something was off.

Today's upcoming adventure. Ribs.. using a carribean glaze recipe I received from Weber's cook book.