Pork Tenderloin Roulade with Bacon, Spinach, Goat Cheese, and Onion
Roulade a.k.a. meat roll. If I invited you over for dinner and told you we were having a pork meat roll you may not show up. If I asked you to come over for a pork roulade you just might get excited; but secretly you would still just be eating a meat roll anyway. This meat roll was pretty good and the sky is the limit on what sort of flavors you can infuse into a roulade. I have made roulade’s from chicken, beef, pork, turkey and even created some deserts in this fashion. They create a very appetizing plate to look at as well.
I didn’t follow a recipe on this one as I like to experiment with what I have in the kitchen once in a while. Its my creative outlet these days to be able to make something in the kitchen and have it turn out really well with the restrictions of what we currently have in the house to eat at the time. Here is the list of ingredients that I used on this particular day.
Ingredients
- Pork Tenderloin
- Baby Spinach
- Bacon
- Red Onion
- Garlic
- Goat Cheese
- Lemon Zest
- Salt
- Orange Marmalade
- Orange Juice
- Chicken Stock
- White Wine
- Shallots
- Parsley
- Butter
- Green Beans
- Cumin
- Butchers Twine
I started my roulade mixture by frying up some chopped bacon. I like it on the crispy side as it adds some nice texture to the inside of the pork. I then drained most of the bacon fat and bits from the pan and used the little bit of bacon fat to fry up my red onion and garlic. Towards the end of the saute I dropped a significant bunch of baby spinach into the mixture and let that wilt into the onions and garlic. It takes a pretty good amount of spinach; it will seem like way to much but by the time it cooks down you aren’t left with much. I then added the bacon bits back to the pan and set that aside for use here in a bit.
I then created my mixture of cheese. In a mixing bowl I placed my softened goat cheese, parsley, pepper, and lemon zest. I mixed this together well and set to the side for use in the upcoming assembly.
Now for the pork loin. I started by removing the silver skin and fat from my whole pork tenderloin. The silver skin is far more important as this will cause your pork to be chewy and tough. Try getting it off the pork using a dry, lint free, towel if needed. This will allow you to grip onto it and pull it right from the meat much more easily. I trimmed the fat off with my kitchen fillet knife.
The next step is to butterfly out your pork loin. I did this by cutting into one side of the pork loin the long direction from end to end. Don’t cut through the meat, the intent is to slowly roll this out and continuing to keep slicing until you can unroll then entire loin into about a 1/2 inch fillet of pork. Here is a decent video on the technique.
I chose to salt the inside of my pork to my taste, as well as a sprinkle of pepper. It was now time to start the basic assembly. With the pork laid out flat I proceeded to place a nice layer of the soft cheese mixture over the pork. Don’t get too overzealous with the cheese. Goat cheese has a pretty strong flavor that can overpower the pork fast. I then placed a layer of the onion, garlic, and spinach over the top of the cheese.
Now for the fun part, the pork rolling. The rolling is actually relatively easy, the keeping it rolled is the trick. I have tried to use toothpicks in the past and while this method works, its a bit messy. I plan on using a sous vide to cook the loin so I chose to use butchers twine to keep it together. It takes a bit of practice but its pretty simple to learn. I’ll provide a video below for reference. Mine doesn’t look as pretty as his, but it turned out just fine. I just delicately rolled the meat up from end to end and used the twine to tie it up.
I noted that I sous vide my loin. You can choose to cook it any way you like. Just make sure you look up a proper internal temp for pork loins and you should be good to go. Pan sear the exterior for flavor and roast it in the oven and it will turn out just as well. The sous vide takes all the guess work out of the process and its almost impossible to mess it up as long as you finish with some pan searing.
My sous vide brand uses a smartphone app. I just pick the temp, put the protein in a vacuum sealed bag, and drop it in. The phone lets me know when to drop, and sets an alarm off when its done to my temp. I then seared off the loin in some cast iron and let it rest while I made a pan sauce and a green bean side.
Once the pork was seared, I then let it rest for about 10 minutes before I removed the butcher twine, created slices and plated it with some sauted green beans with cumin, salt and butter.
The Pan Sauce
I like to put a sauce over my roulade too. For this one I chose to saute some shallots in clarified butter, I then deglazed with some white wine and reduced until the wine was almost gone, added some chicken stock, and then reduced again until it began to thicken. I then added some orange marmalade and juice. I finished the sauce with some butter and salt to taste. I spooned this mixture over the sliced and plated pork roulade and placed the green beans next to it as a side dish.
Conclusion
My roulade turned out pretty good. I faltered a bit by not searing this enough in the finishing stage and also used just a bit too much goat cheese. While I think the general concept of this dish is really amazing, make sure you adjust your ingredients to your own tastes. I think next time I may add a bit of dijon to my pan sauce as well. Good luck with your meat rolls! These are a really great way to get some complex flavors into a dinner meal.