Fuel: Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

It's been a minute since I last shared any recipes, so I now would be a great time to clear the videos of my stuffed pork tenderloin from my hard drive. This is a delicious way to prepare an extremely lean and affordable protein source. Try it out the same way I prepared it or combine any ingredients you like. 

If you follow along with the recipe I did for the YouTube video here are the ingredients you'll need:

Ingredients

• Pork Tenderloin (1-2 kg)
• 1/4 cup Cream Cheese
• Fresh Basil (a handful)
• Fresh Garlic (a head or so worth of cloves)
• 1 Pack of Frozen, chopped spinach

Directions

1. Prepare your pork by butterflying the meat to spread it out as much as possible. You want the pork to be as flat as possible so that it can be rolled up with all that good stuff inside. Any food aficionados that see this video will likely cringe at the way I butterflied the pork, but it's all about taste in my opinion. I bought a huge pork tenderloin roast on sale and didn't need it all for the recipe, so I cut it in half and saved the other half for pork chops.
2. Get out your mallet and rain down vengeance and chunks of meat (or use a plastic bag or plastic wrap to avoid this).
3. Season the pork with salt and pepper.
4. Spread your cream cheese out on the pork to cover it as much as possible.
5. Chop the garlic and basil and sprinkle to coat the cream cheese.
6. Defrost and drain the spinach. If you've just gotten to this step than microwave it a bit to defrost and then drain off the water.
7. Roll the fat bastard up and secure with toothpicks or kitchen twine if you've got it handy.
8. Bake in a preheated oven at 375 F for 35-40 minutes.
9. You've got yourself a great complete meal for low carb, or it will go well with any carb you want on the side.

Nutrition

The nutritional content of the stuffed pork tenderloin will depend on what you put in it and your own preference of portioning, but to get an idea, a 10 oz serving of pork with roughly 1 oz of cream cheese and 2 oz of spinach would look something like this:

Calories 676 kcal

Protein 88 g

Fat 33 g

Carbs 3 g

The spinach will provide you with a healthy dose of Vitamins A and K, as well as calcium and magnesium. The cream cheese, or any other cheese you want to add, will boost the calcium even more. Pork will provide you with lots of Vitamin B1, phosphorus, zinc and selenium.

Review

I basically used whatever I had on hand for this recipe, which worked out surprisingly well. One of the best things about this recipe is that it tastes great cold too, so it can be packed in your cooler for the day without worrying about finding somewhere to nuke it.

To kick it up another notch I would add another more flavourful cheese in addition to the cream cheese, like feta or goat cheese perhaps. Chopped spinach also doesn't have much taste to it, so adding a little something else would work well for that too. I tend to prefer Mediterranean flavours with my pork so I'm thinking kalamata olives, sundried tomatoes, or artichoke hearts would combine nicely with the other ingredients. Drizzle some extra virgin olive oil in the mix and add some oregano and now we're talking. Either I have too much time on my hands, or I'm just making myself hungry now. Bon Appetit!

Fortissimus

What flavours do you like to combine your pork with? Leave a comment below and let me know what's worth trying!

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