I made this again for my husband and a dinner guest. This time I actually remembered to buy fresh sage. WOW! I thought it was good before but with the sage it was awesome!!! I also got the cornstarch mixture right this time. My husband and guest were thrilled with the dish. Another Rouxbe hit!!!!

I made this this weekend for my wife. Her general reaction to food that I
make is "It's good". That's it. She is more of a food for sustenance kind of person. I'm really trying to expand her palette as well as mine. So I scaled this down for one pork loin. Served it with fresh mashed potatoes and steamed baby carrots. Also I made a fresh sun dried tomato and basil bread to go with it. Wow. I got an "OMG honey this is awesome." The flavor of the fresh sage and granny smith apples really work together. I will def. be making this again. Thanks Rouxbe for the inspiration.

Great recipe with amazing flavor. I ran into trouble with browning the loin though. I just bought an all-clad frying pan and I brought it up to temperature using the water bead method. When I added the olive oil and then the butter, the butter browned and blackened almost immediately. I switched over to canola oil - recognizing I am probably sacrificing some flavor - which didn't burn as fast, but it was still a challenge to find the exact temperature where the loin browned on all four sides, and the sucs didn't burn. Was the water bead method too much heat for the butter?

When pan frying, it is best to use a fat with a high smoke point. Olive oil can smoke quickly and butter can burn easily. If the oil that you add starts to smoke, then your pan is too hot. Make sure to review the lesson on Pan Frying. Also, practice makes perfect so keep at it. Cheers!

This was so yummy...and so easy! We loved it! I scaled down the recipe for one pork roast rather than 3 and it was perfect for my aunt and I, with a plate of leftovers. Brining is TOTALLY worth it...this was the juiciest pork I've ever had. I served this with sauteed cabbage, onions & fennel, and a salad of mixed greens & cress. It was a lovely dinner! Thanks Rouxbe!

Made this dish but used pork loin chops and sccaled the sauce back for two. No leftovers, served with sauteed carrots and brown rice. Just great.

I'm hearing "add the maple syrup" in the audio but don't see it listed in the ingredients or see it in video... My imagination? how much would you use?

Good catch! I usually add a few tablespoons of maple syrup to the brine, but it is optional. It just gives the pork a little extra hint of flavor and sweetness. Cheers!

Hi Dawn,
I just tried this recipe and it turned out excellent! I did a minor modification to the sauce by adding 1 tbsp of brown sugar which I thought balanced the tartness of the green apples...

The brine made the meat very moist and extremely flavourful, the maple syrup in the brine was definitely the secret ingredient that gave it that extra depth of flavour.

I did have one problem though, once I pulled out the tenderloin, I did pat dry it, however, when I put into the pan to sear, a lot of moisture from the brine came up and there was a fair bit of steaming going on... Because of that, I didn't get a great sear as I normally would say on pork chops/chicken that wasn't brined...

Given that when you brine, you're soaking in water, how is it possible to get a good sear?? Do I have to physically squeeze excess water out like a towel? What am I missing here?

In either case, this was an excellent meal, the in-laws were impressed, great recipe and great technique to make it a memorable meal!

Thanks for any tips to address the above issue and it will be perfect!

It's hard to say exactly what went wrong but it sounds like perhaps maybe the meat was not pat dry well enough or perhaps your pan was not hot enough before you started searing the meat. See the lesson on "Searing" for more detail on this. Next time, maybe try air drying the pork for a couple of hours before cooking it. Or perhaps just try patting it drier. No need to squeeze the meat out like a towel though. This would only damage the meat.

You may also find it helpful to watch or review the lesson on "Brining", In particular, topic 8 - "After Brining | Preparing Meat for Cooking". Hope this helps. Glad you enjoyed your dinner. Cheers!

The recipe calls for three tenderloins, but I am only using one tenderloin. Will the brine ingredients be the same?

You might want to just do half a recipe for the brine. For more information, you may also, want to check out the lesson called "How to Brine". Cheers!

Didn't find any apple cider for the sauce, but I expected it to be an alcoholic drink anyway so, being in Belgium, I switched it for a Lindemans Apple beer. From the comments above it turns out the cider shouldn't be alcoholic so apple juice would have been a more natural choice, but no matter. It tasted delicious. Just added a teaspoon of sugar to the sauce to counter the beer's slight tartness, otherwise everything was the same.

The meat itself was divine. Brining is an amazing technique, one of my favourite things I've learned from Rouxbe.

Hi Rouxbe,

After several years of membership, I'm encouraging myself to really learn the techniques in your recipes. I do have a couple of questions.

1) Removing the silver skin was a little trickier than you made it appear. My tenderloin seemed to have more white strands in various places around the meat (which looked more like marbling), while yours was clearly the silver skin you were referring to. I am curious how you know when you are removing the silver skin and when you are removing fat.

2) My jus was also much lighter in color. I did use store bought low sodium Pacific chicken stock. I'm guessing that this is because I didn't make a dark stock. How much additional flavor am I losing here because my jus was lighter? Does browning the onions for longer result in a darker sauce, too?

3) I also had to use about three times the corn starch to get my sauce to thicken. It was wonderful, but just wanted to check in to see if that was normal.

I love cooking, everyone loved the dish. I know that there are little tweaks and changes that I can make along the way to improve in my cooking, and I'm interested in how to improve this dish even more so it becomes better and better.

Thanks Rouxbe!
Brooke

First off let me say congratulations on a job well done. Now lets see if I can't answer your questions.

1) Removing the silver skin should generally not be that difficult. But it will get easier with practice. It sounds like perhaps you were trimming off more than the silver skin. Silver skin is that tough white, opaque connective tissue around the meat. Basically, it is the fascia around the muscle.

2) The jus that you made was likely darker due to the fact that you may have had less sucs and/or you used a lighter stock. Darker stock = darker sauce.

As for how much flavor you are loosing because you had a lighter stock and used a store-bought stock — for those that make their own stock they would say you are missing "a lot" of flavor. But you would have to do a comparison and see for yourself. The best way to really know the power of a good stock is to make your own and then compare it to your regular store-bought stock. Lets just say that I could drink a cup of homemade stock, but I can't say the same for most store-bought stocks.

Browning the onions can lead to more color but you just have to be careful you don't burn them as this will impart an bitter taste into the sauce.

3) Again, it's the store-bought stock. I lacks the gelatin that homemade stock contains (due to the fat and connective tissue). For more information on this be sure to watch the lesson on "How to Make a Pan Sauce".

Keep up the great work and the practicing Brooke. Hope that helps. Cheers!