the wonder of culinary discovery

i feel like i imagine one of those great explorers felt when they first landed upon the shores of a previously undiscovered world. i made an unintentional discovery that has me filled with delight & amazement, and i feel compelled to share.

now, mind you, i may be sharing this fantastic discovery with all this hype & build-up only to leave you feeling as if you've just been informed "lo! if you add sugar to your food, it will become sweet!" which is to imply, you may roll your eyes & think "duh. and you claim to feel at all comfortable in the kitchen? mercy." so just prepare yourselves for possibly already knowing this & having the reaction of the Native Americans when Chris Columbus (yeah, yeah, i know, or whoever it was that *actually* first stumbled upon North America) whooped about in delight having "discovered" the land they already were well aware existed. and also? i have not tested out this theory on a second recipe or even the same recipe twice, so maybe it was all a fluke. i'm taking the chance that it wasn't.

::clap clap:: disclaimers aside, MY DISCOVERY!!

so, last night's menu plan was to try out a brand new recipe for Pork Tenderloin with Mustard Sauce. said recipe calls for a 1-pound pork tenderloin. as i was shopping on Sunday, pork tenderloin after tenderloin of pork was two pounds... two & a half pounds...four pounds. you get the idea. the recipe calls for one pound. and as the recipe also is said to produce four servings, more than one pound would have been overkill.

so there i was, poking through packages of pork, when to my right i notice a one-pound package. i see its label contains the words "pork" and "tenderloin" which were good signs, and NOT any words indicating that this piece of meat had been pre-marinated in anything or that it had passed its prime date of usage, which would be bad. "score!!" (i thought it, i didn't actually do it. but in my head? totally did the "touchdown arms.") into my cart went the pork tenderloin & i scurried off to complete my shopping.

fast forward to Wednesday evening. package of pork on my cutting board, waiting to be opened. and then i noticed the additional word i hadn't caught while doing my celebratory mental dancing in Publix: filet. "hmmm... i hope that doesn't pose a problem with the success of the meal," i thought. but i reasoned that it was pork & also tenderloin, so i sliced the package open & proceeded to cut the meat into 1-inch slices. according to the recipe, a one-pound pork tenderloin should have yielded me twelve one-inch-thick slices, yet i only had six. i noticed they looked considerably wider in diameter than the usual pork tenderloin slices i have cut for recipes in the past, so i cut them each in half, and voila--look! math! it is useful!--i had twelve pieces.

the rest of the cooking was uneventful, especially impressive actually, when you recall that this was my maiden voyage with this particular recipe. and then i got to the part where i start to question if the meat was thoroughly cooked. i always worry about this just a little, because, you know, not a fan of the food poisoning. so, i selected a piece of the pork to cut into. and then i played the little mind game with myself that i frequently do: "it's a little pink in the middle. but pork is supposed to be a little pink. but is that a little too much pink? how pink should it be? maybe that's too much. but the pink is barely a blush. in fact, it's almost gone now. maybe i should check a second one to be sure..."

now, if you cook at all, and most specifically cook pork, you know that while you have this little inner dialogue, the remaining pork in the pan goes from being cooked to perfection to being overcooked. and overcooked pork is dry & chewy & just... meh. i hemmed & hawed & gave it another thirty seconds to cook. then i pulled the pork out of the pan as instructed, praying for the best. when i cut into one more test piece, there was hardly a trace of pink & my pork tenderloin pieces lived up to their naming of "the other white meat" & i wondered if i'd overdone it.

i portioned out my serving & sat down to eat. the pork cut like butter. it was tender & not dry (i hate that 'm' word, you know the one i mean) & not the tiniest bit chewy. like, at all. i scarfed down my dinner, making a mental note to keep this recipe.

but the true test? that came today. i heated up my leftovers in the microwave. aka the place where meat goes to become leather, no matter how perfectly prepared it was for the initial consumption of the meal. friends... lurkers... fellow bloggers. THE MEAT WAS JUST AS TENDER & NOT DRY & TASTY as last night. apparently (and for some reason i won't even pretend to know) the secret to not-dry pork tenderloin is to get your hands on one that is a filet. (which, i must point out did not cost me more than the non-filet packages were priced. in case you were wondering if i went into debt with the purchase of said pork.) (pork is starting to sound like it's not a real word anymore.)

as i said, i have yet to test this theory on a second recipe or at least a second time, so i apologize if my joy proves to be hasty & eventually incorrect. but how could i keep this (potential) knowledge to myself when i could be sparing others from yet another bite of dry & blah pork tenderloin?!

go forth & test the pork tenderloin filet theory! i'm already plotting the follow-up recipe to back my declaration as fact. it was *that* good.