Background: I was trying out a gifted subscription to a meal kit service (for “research”) and picked something I thought my family might eat: pork tenderloin, fig sauce, potatoes, and carrots. I immediately threw out everything that was in the box that was not food. I stashed the carrots in the crisper for crudités later. I swapped out the raw potatoes for diced frozen ones. I saved the fig sauce as an experiment. (We have fig tress. The kids harvest figs. They eat fig cookies. They do not eat figs or fig sauce.) When it came to the meat, it was “eye round roast,” not tenderloin. This is an uncommon cut in pork. I suspect the meal kit service makes its money by making you feel like you are living “high on the hog,” while actually dressing up lower on the hog cuts. (The “phrase high on the hog” comes from the fact that pricier cuts of meats, like tenderloin, are the ones physically at the top of the pig. As you move from the back to the feet, things get cheaper. The eye of round comes from the (duh) round section, which is the leg. But it’s rarely called that with hogs. It’s almost tenderloin adjacent with the sirloin in between. It’s a fine cut, sometimes called a leg cutlet. I didn’t have time to think about what to do that my kids would eat so here’s the move I used. You can do it too. The plus side is this time it was free and in the future, this is a cheaper cut than the tenderloin:
- Get a pork leg roast or cutlets.
- Get some apples and potatoes.
- Start cooking the potatoes. If you aren’t sure how you want to cook them, try the Pretty Ok Crispy Enough Potato Cubes move.
- Cut them into smaller pieces if you want to stretch them.
- Use a tenderizing mallet to pound them under a plastic bag. Get them as thin as possible without turning them into carpaccio.
- Toss in extra dark soy sauce.
- Working front to back, start laying them on a ripping hot cast iron griddle.
- By the time you put the last one, return to the first one you put on the griddle and flip once.
- By the time you get to the last one again, return to the first one and start removing them to a piece of foil.
- When you get them to the end, gather up the foil like a loose hobo’s bindle and let rest.
- While the pork is resting, hit the griddle with water while it’s hot.
- Slice some apples and serve the pork with potatoes.
Why It Works
- Get lower on the hog than tenderloin.
- Honeycrisps and Russets are a good combination. Splurge on the apples and pinch pennies on the potatoes.
- Microwaved baked potatoes work fine, too. Just know that the pork is going to cook like super-super fast. Like this is the fastest meat dish you’ve ever cooked. Start your potatoes 10 minutes ago.
- This would also be the first move toward stir fry if you were serving with rice, which would be a totally reasonable thing to do.
- If you don’t have a tenderizing mallet, use a can wrapped in a plastic bag like in the Crushing, Breaking, Tearing, and Pounding as Moves move.
- Whatever soy sauce you have is fine.
- I hold tongs in my right hand and get my left hand porky.
- By the time I lay it down with my left and flip it and pick it up with the tongs in my right.
- Taste one as you go–probably should be the first one–to see if you like the doneness. Remember the carryover cooking that’s going to happen during the rest.
- You only have to rest the meat long enough to wash the griddle and slice the apple.
- I know you aren’t supposed to deglaze cast iron with water, but when you have charred soy sauce on your griddle, it’s either this or scraping it with metal. The water (which is actually mostly steam because the griddle is so hot) is actually more gentle than scraping. I apply rendered pork fat to it as soon as it dries (under flame).
- You don’t have to do anything to the apples. You got dinner on the table. Good job.
Mods:
- Serve with rice and dry slaw. Toss the apples in the slaw with some rice wine vinegar and sesame oil.
- Serve on slider buns with one of the Super Sauces.
- Serve in tacos with some Black Beans, Guac, Pico and dry slaw. (Toss the slaw in hot sauce or chipotle mayo.)