Bacon-wrapped pork roast! Wrapping the pork roast in bacon brings extra juiciness and flavor to the roast.
One of the first things I learned from my mother about cooking meat is that fat=flavor. If you have lean cuts of meat, you often need to do something to introduce fat back into the meat just to make it taste better and to help keep it from drying out.
Along those lines, here’s a trick you can use with a pork loin roast, a relatively lean cut, to bump up the flavor and keep it juicy. Just brown the roast first on the stovetop, then wrap it in strips of bacon to roast. As the roast cooks, the bacon will bathe it in flavor.
Bacon-wrapped Pork Roast Recipe
- Prep time: 5 minutes
- Cook time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
- Yield: Serves 4
Ingredients
- 1 pork loin roast (about 1 1/2 pounds)
- Salt and pepper
- 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 Tbsp finely chopped fresh rosemary
- 1/4 lb bacon, thinly sliced
- 1 cup dry white wine
Method
1 Salt roast and let rest at room temp: About an hour before you intend to cook the roast, take it out of the refrigerator and sprinkle it with salt on all sides. Let it sit at room temp to take the chill off before you roast it.
2 Pre-heat oven to 375°F (190°C).
3 Sear roast on all sides on stovetop: Pat pork roast dry with paper towels. Sprinkle it with pepper on all sides and again with a little salt (you likely wiped off much of the earlier sprinkle of salt when you patted it dry.)
Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet on medium high heat. When the oil is shimmery hot, add the pork roast to the pan and brown it on all sides (don’t move the roast until it has browned on one side). About 10 minutes. Remove the roast from the pan and set on a plate.
4 Rub roast with rosemary, wrap with bacon: Rub the pork roast all over with minced fresh rosemary. Wrap the roast in bacon strips, overlapping the strips if necessary. Tie the roast up with kitchen string to hold the bacon strips in place.
5 Roast in oven: Place the roast in a roasting pan and roast in the oven at 375°F (190°C), occasionally basting with the pan juices, until the internal temperature of the roast reaches 145°F (63°C) on a meat thermometer, about 35 to 40 minutes.
6 Tent with foil and let rest: When the roast has reached temperature, remove it from the oven and place it on a serving dish. Tent the roast with foil to keep it warm while it rests and while you make the pan sauce.
7 Make sauce with roast drippings: To make a sauce with the pan drippings, place the roasting pan on top of the stove on low heat. Pour white wine into the pan and start scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan with a flat edged metal or wood spatula.
Pour the scraped up drippings through a fine mesh sieve into a small saucepan.
Use a metal spoon to skim off excess fat. Heat until simmering, then remove from heat and pour into a gravy boat.
Serve the roast with the sauce from the pan drippings.
