Gluten-free AND Low-carb Delicious Dinner: Kent’s Easy Asian Pork Loin

Kent made dinner again the other night, well I helped a little, and it turned out really well!  The 6 of us ate about 4# of pork loin, so obviously, we all loved it.  He came up with the recipe himself – he got inspired watching the Saturday morning cooking shows again, and I’m loving this Saturday morning routine of his more all the time!  (He flips on the Food Network while he makes his coffee and egg sandwich.)  So as he watched them doing different things with pork loin, he got the ideas for the following recipe, which I named…

Kent’s Easy Asian Pork Loin

These are the ingredients…and we only took this picture because the one we took of the pork after it came out of the oven was so blah, we were afraid it would scare you off.  I’m not quite sure if this hunk of frozen pork loin is quite what I was going for either, though…

• Cut a slit down the center of a pork loin (from a good farm with healthy animals – rarely found in a grocery store), and add plenty of chopped (organic if possible) onion, garlic, apples & he also added some pineapple “tidbits” (no high fructose corn syrup).  He didn’t keep track of amounts, just add however much of each of these that you’d like to eat with it on the side when it’s done – I liked some with each bite, so I suggest you throw on a lot.
• Wrap it up tightly in foil to keep the juices in.  (See the comment below about a better way to wrap it.)
• Bake until a thermometer reads 160*-170* at the thickest part of the meat.  We baked it inside our covered stone for 45 minutes at 325*, then another 35 minutes or so at 400*.  (We had to turn the oven up for the muffins – see recipe for those below.)
• Meanwhile, he made a sweet & sour sauce to go with it.  In a medium saucepan add these ingredients:  1 1/4 c. chicken broth, 1/2 c. sugar, 1/3 c. red wine vinegar, and 2 t. fermented soy sauce.  Boil, then add these, already mixed together:  1/4 c. cold water and 2 T. arrowroot.  Stir ’til thickened.
• If you’re not watching your carbs, you could served this over brown rice or even more nutritious: germinated rice, and it still would’ve been gluten-free!  If so, you probably would’ve wanted to double or triple the sweet & sour sauce recipe, though, so you have more to serve it with.

To go with it, Kent stir-fried some snap peas (the flat kind) with olive oil, sea salt & pepper, garlic powder and onion powder.  (Even the kids eat these they’re so good.)  And I made these: Ann Marie’s blueberry muffins made with coconut flour. I thought they were a bit soggy so I only had one, but I think I just didn’t drain my blueberries enough.  However, that didn’t stop the family from eating the other 17 of them!  (I made a double batch and got 9 with each batch instead of 6 like Ann Marie, also FYI:  in Michigan things must take longer to bake, because mine took 10 minutes longer than the 15 minutes written in her recipe.)

• This recipe is part of REAL FOOD WEDNESDAYS/Gluten-free meal ideas at Cheeseslave’s blog this week – check out more Real Food Wednesday topics!
• Read about when Kent made dinner a couple weeks ago – what a guy!
• 10 Healthy Breakfast Ideas – well, now it’s more like 12 or 13, because I keep adding more.  Take a look at one of my most popular posts ever.
• Are you missing passion in your marriage?  This relates to nutrition, honest!  Well, sort of.
• Are you struggling to pay for groceries like many are these days, especially when trying to buy healthy foods?  Here are a couple posts to help:  12 tips for Eating Healthy on a Budget and more ideas are at Cheeseslave’s RFW carnival on budgeting.  Also, I just posted one of THE best articles I’ve ever read on the topic of eating healthy affordably, written by my friend, Anne:  eating healthy shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg.

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