Woodfired Pork Loin with Beans
Woodfired Pork Loin with Beans is a fabulous combination of textures and flavours – crunchy pork crackling, sweet tender meat and creamy, garlicky herb-infused beans. Once we started cooking crackling in the woodfired oven, we have never gone back to the conventional oven. It’s a winner every time so no more of that will it, won’t it moment of opening the oven door and not sure what kind of crackling you’re going to get. It’s always reliable and we love it!
Here’s the recipe for what we did on this week’s #woodfiredweekly – do check out the video and subscibe to our youtube channel; we’d love it if you can help us up our numbers.
Woodfired Pork Loin with Beans – Ingredients
1 pork loin about 1.5kg, with the skin scored for crackling
1 leek, cut in half and then into strips and then washed and dried
1 red pepper, deseeded and cut into 5mm strips
1 large carrot, peeled, halved and cut into thin strips
8 cloves garlic, left whole
Sunflwer oil and Olive oil
Seasalt & ground black pepper
Herbs – we used oregano, sage, rosemary – whatever you have in your garden
1 tin beans, rinsed – we used haricot beans
150ml chicken stock
1tsp mustard – Dijon or grain
1tbsp white wine vinegar
2tbsp chopped fresh parsley
Woodfired Pork Loin with Beans – Oven, Equipment etc
Oven state – 3-4 Mississippi
Useful to have a heat deflector to protect the sides of the pork and lift the flames over the top of the oven when you want to crackle the skin and heat up the beans with a small fire
Very useful to have a probe thermometer to test the internal temperature of the meat when it’s cooked
Woodfired Pork Loin with Beans – Method
1. Have a good bed of embers in the oven and sweep it off to one side once the floor is heated through.
2. Rub a little sunflower oil into the pork skin and rub over some seasalt.
3. Add a little olive oil to a roasting tin and mix all the veggies including the garlic together. Put in the roasting tin with some mixed sprigs of fresh herbs on top. Sit the pork, skin side up, on top of all of that.
4. Put the pork in the oven for 50-60 minutes until the internal temperature is 65C; the door should be just ajar.
5. Take the pork out of the roasting tin and leave it to relax while you finish the dish.
6. Discard the herbs and any very brown veggies. Drain off any excess fat. Stir the mustard, vinegar and stock into the veggies and add the beans.
7. Increase the temperature in the oven with a small fire and heat through the beans and the juices. Stir in the parsley and serve the beans with a thick slice of the pork and lots of chopped crackling.
Woodfired Pork Loin with Beans – Alternatives
Use different cuts of pork – belly or shoulder for slow cooking
Use different beans – borlotti, butter, canellini – they all work well
Mix up the herbs you use as well as the veggies – sometimes we sit the pork on chopped raw beetroot which then cooks in the heat and absorbs the meat juices; outstanding!