Four Little Pigs Sous Vide Pork Tenderloin for the 4th

When shopping recently for some MEAT, I came across the following in the meat cooler at Costco:

1. St. Louis cut pork spare ribs, for $5.99 /lb
2. Pork baby back ribs, for $2.59 /lb
3. Pork tenderloin, for $2.39 /lb

This means that the best-quality meat was actually the cheapest, so I walked out with 8.49 lbs of a whole pork tenderloin.  As they say, "we're eating high on the hog tonight!"

Approximately 5 lb. of pork tenderloin.

I saved about 3 lb. to either grill and/or smoke and cut the remaining tenderloin into 4 equal "chunks" for sous vide.  The filets were flavored with the following: (from left to right)

My four little pigs for the 4th of July.

1. Wild dried rosemary with salt and pepper.  The rosemary came from the lighthouse keeper's garden at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego, CA.  Don't worry, the ranger was giving away excess trimmings to visitors since they were worried the rosemary bush was taking over too much of the garden.  It was just luck we were there at that time.  Unfortunately, I took the photo prior to seasoning this filet, so it's shown pristine.

2. Pink Himalayan sea salt and freshly-ground pepper

3. Brown sugar, honey and tarragon

4. Byrons' Butt Rub, my go-to pork dry rub

Pink Himalayan sea salt and freshly-ground pepper.

Brown sugar, honey, and tarragon.  An additional squirt of honey was injected into the bag before vacuum-sealing.  Photo taken prior to tarragon being added.

Byrons' Butt Rub.

Results:

The 135 F was a much better temperature than the 145 F I used previously for pork.  The meat was nice and tender.  The only two I prepared were the Rosemary and the Brown sugar, honey, tarragon.  The consensus was that the Rosemary yielded much stronger flavor.  The latter was far more subtle, though I would continue to experiment with that flavoring in the future.

The pork was removed at 5pm, having been in the water bath at 135 F since 10:30am.  Two were immediately frozen and two were seared and served.

Pre-seared.  The Rosemary pork is on the bottom.

Nice searing.

More nice searing.

Post-searing.

Sliced and served.

Nice color, very tender texture, good flavor.

Nice slice of the tenderloin.