February 12, 2018

Quick Pork with Mushroom Sauce

A super quick, simple mushroom sauce dresses up plain pork loin in no time for an everyday dinner. Serve it with rice or mashed potatoes to enjoy all the goodness!

If there’s one thing I know about this family, it’s that we all like mushrooms…

Well – I do know many other things about us, of course, but in terms of food, that’s high on the list. And I’m pretty sure you’re going to see more recipes including mushrooms here in Inhabited Kitchen!

But I don’t always have fresh mushrooms in the house. And I do not always want to take the time to clean and saute them. (Not that it takes all that much time, but…) Back in New York, I used dried mushrooms a lot – especially the Japanese dried shitake – but I have not yet found a source for them here. (I understand there are good Asian markets, I just haven’t been there yet.)

[clickToTweet tweet=”A super quick, simple mushroom sauce dresses up plain pork loin in no time for an everyday dinner. Serve it with rice or mashed potatoes to enjoy all the goodness!” quote=”A super quick, simple mushroom sauce dresses up plain pork loin in no time for an everyday dinner. Serve it with rice or mashed potatoes to enjoy all the goodness!” theme=”style3″]

I can, however, get mushroom broth! No reason not to make a sauce or gravy with that. So – I did.

Now – a word about serving sizes. I have been allowing four ounces of raw meat (or the equivalent in other protein sources) per person in most of my dinner recipes, because Rich and I tend to eat about that much. Sometimes a little less, depending on what else we have, sometimes a little more if I happen to have five ounce pork chops – but it is a common enough amount. That is – for an active adult.

The part that makes serving sizes difficult is that not everyone is an active adult. Many people are children, as those of you blessed with them have noticed. Or teenagers. We are now blessed with two elderly and sedentary adults – appetite tends to fall off as we age, I am told, even if we are well enough to keep up activity, and the parents both have mobility issues. Well – a small child eats much less than I do, a teen will eat what I do and then ask what’s really for dinner (now that he’s had a snack) – and the parents eat significantly less than we do.

So sometimes I will tell you the amount I cooked, and say it feeds three to four people, and sometimes (if it doesn’t affect the way the recipe works) I will use my original proportions and say four. In this case, doesn’t affect the recipe so I’ll tell you to use a pound of pork loin, but in fact I used about 13 ounces. And I expect all of you to vary things a bit, to feed your own families.

Directions

So – take your pound of pork loin (or whatever amount feeds your family,) cut it into bite sized pieces (I will spare you the discussion of that term!) and chop a small onion. Heat oil in a frying pan, and add the onion. Saute a few minutes until it softens and starts to brown, then add the pork. (I do that while I finish cutting up the pork.)

Stir the pork and saute it a few minutes. (Ideally, it will start to brown, but these days I find I often have so much water cooking out of it that the meat doesn’t really brown… and you don’t want to overcook it. Do what you can.) Then add a cup of mushroom broth. Now, you can use pre-made commercial broth, you can use Better than Bouillon, you can certainly make your own with dried mushrooms as I did in Tamari Mushroom Pork Chops. Whatever makes the most sense for you.

Simmer the pork in the broth for ten minutes, until the meat is almost cooked. Then add a roux cube to make the liquid into sauce (or gravy.) Just drop the frozen cube in and stir until fully dissolved, then simmer another minute or two to thicken the sauce.

To serve, you can either remove the meat to a dish and serve the sauce on the side, or put it all together in one bowl. I actually served it all together (after reheating it after the pictures – the life of a food blogger family!) and everyone seemed to like it that way – do whichever makes more sense to you. (We all spooned it over rice.) You can even toss vegetables into the sauce to make it a one pot meal!

And with only a few minutes time, you have given your family something more than plain pork loin – a sauce with a little flavor.