Submitted as part of the Women of the Grill Recipe Contest

You just think you’ve had “Good” Pork Loin

Submitted By: Crystal Yarbrough
Location: Tuscaloosa, AL
Background: Hey there! I was born and raised in a tiny town called Hokes Bluff, Alabama (yeah, it sounds like Hoax and Bluff is another word for lyin’, but it “ain’t” no joke!) I’m a registered nurse, have been for about 16 years now, but I’m staying at home now with a slew of kids, eight of em (some mostly grown but some still fairly little), blended family, you know? Anyway, I love to grill anytime and tailgate during football season. My husband and I would probably fight over who got to use that thing first! I love being from the south, have one of the thickest drawls most folks have ever heard, and have learned to use that to my advantage. The fact that most people believe the accent means I’m less than intelligent allows me to surprise’m sometimes. I love cooking, gardening, fishing, watching SEC Football and Basketball, I am addicting to bargain hunting, auctions, and “couponing”.
Recipe Name: You just think you’ve had “Good” Pork Loin
Background and Description: With all the kids, I am a big “couponer”, and I got a great deal on some pork loins, so I bought a bunch of them. Cooked a couple one night with my usual ingredients and they were real good, but I knew they could be better, because they were a tad bit on the dry side…you’d think pork would have enough fat to not be, but pork loin is pretty lean. So, I set out to improve it!  You may find some of my ingredients a bit odd, but, I promise, it’s good!
Ingredients: – Pork Loin (You can get ‘em cheap on a buy one get one sale and use coupons and it’s even better)
– 1 lb Bacon (lb is for pound, not little bit, and don’t get that sissy bacon that has holes in it, I mean the thick stuff)
– 1 bottle of Country Bob’s…’nough said
– 1 cup of brown sugar
– 1 Tbsp of Granulated Garlic (not Garlic salt nor powder nor flakes)
– 2 teaspoons of Ground Cinnamon (Yeah, this is one of the odd ones, but trust me)
– 1/2 tsp of ground red pepper (more if you ain’t scared)
– 1/2 tsp of curry powder
– 1 or 2 tsps (or 1 Tbsp of COARSE ground black pepper***)
– 1 tsp of white pepper (don’t argue – it IS different)
– 1 Tbsp of Rosemary (I use the dry stuff from a bottle, cause Southern girls raise maters, green beans, corn and the like we don’t have “herb gardens”)
– 2 tsp salt (just salt or you can use that fru fru Sea Salt if you want to)
– About a half a container of Butter Seasoning (It’s over there by the spices at the grocery store-now I ain’t talking about that popcorn buttery salt flavoring stuff, this is just butter flavoring, dang it, I’ll just go ahead and say it Land-o-Lakes makes it)
– 1 six pack of beer divided: 1/8 teaspoon and the rest of it.

***You know better than me how much pepper you like
Recipe Instructions: Mix all the dry ingredients except the brown sugar in a container (I use a large casserole dish instead of a bowl, cause you can get the stuff on the meat better in a minute, I don’t know what size it is, bigger’n the pork loin a little bit) Now add the brown sugar (if you done it before the flavors woulda clumped up in that sticky stuff) Combine the “Country Bob’s” and 1/8 tsp beer (just drop that much in the bottle and put the lid back on ‘n shake it, beer ain’t meant for cooking, it’s meant for drinking) May as well start pre-heatin’ your grill to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (if you was gonna smoke it you shoulda done that a while ago now) Be sure you have a meat thermometer, don’t want nobody gettin’ sick now. Get you a brush and coat that loin with Country Bob’s, just a light coat for now on all sides (don’t forget the ends) Spread all that dry mixture out in whatever it is you’re using and lay the meat on there and mash it down real hard so it’ll stick good, then turn it over ‘n do that to the other side, again don’t forget them ends, scrape some up in your hands and smash it on them too.  Now, take them bacon pieces and lay one on either end of the loin, long ways, so that they are hanging half way off the ends. Then start laying pieces crossways hanging over equal and butt em up right next to one another, you can even overlap ‘em a tad, but not too much, cause you might run out depending on how tall that pig was the loin come from. Go all the way to the other end, then comes the tricky part, ‘specially depending on how much of the beer is gone by now, but just tear off some aluminum foil and kinda cup it over all the meat, squuush it up and use that to turn it over so you can wrap that bacon the rest of the way around. Now, here’s where you coulda showed off, if I’d a told you to lay some of that meat-tying string across ways too. But you can just tuck that bacon around good, then use another piece of foil and turn it back over so it will be smooth, or you can just jab some toothpicks in it as it lays and be done with that. Now, paint it with a bunch of the “Country Bob’s” and save a little to use if the bacon starts to get too dry.  Reinforce that foil that’s under it and go lay it on the grill. It’s gonna take about 20-30 mins per pound to get it hot enough to be safe. And, yeah, you really do need to use the meat thermometer to make sure it gets to 160-170 degrees F (I ain’t trying to spell that word again and I can’t find no little bitty circle thing on this keyboard)
Recipe Summary: I just want you to know, all those measurements up there are just guesstimates, cause I don’t measure anything except medicine (and maybe that 1/8 tsp of beer, cause I wouldn’t want to affect the reserve) My momma taught me to use my hand, and when I could get near exact three times out of four passing dry stuff from my hand to a measuring spoon, I was done with having to wash those confounded things (the spoons, not my hands just to clarify)

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