This recipe can be found in Back to Basics, page 126.

For dinner last week, I decided to tackle my first of what will eventually be many Barefoot Contessa pork recipes. To be honest, pork has never been my favorite meat. The texture, to me, is in between chicken and steak and since I’m not a big fan of steak (or beef in general), pork has always hard to swallow.

That said, every once in a while I will eat pork. And even few times I eat it, I find that it was cooked well enough that I could actually enjoy it! It was no different with this Barefoot Contessa recipe. Ina’s Herb-Marinated Loin of Pork is PACKED with flavor. And take it from me. I think this recipe has the potential to make a pork-eater out of a pork-hater!

This recipe combines many flavor profiles to create a tasty dish: lemon, dijon mustard, fresh herbs, etc. Surprisingly for Barefoot Contessa recipes, there is no pepper in the recipe. (That my family appreciated since they feel Ina tends to over-use pepper…) Even the salt is a bit low by Ina standards. However, the magic is in the marinade and the longer it sits, the better. I was also to have my pork bathe in the flavors for about 7 hours before we cooked it. I can’t imagine what the flavor would have been if it rested over night!

This is also a super easy recipe. Yes, many of Ina’s recipe are easy to follow, some of them take so much time. The good thing about this recipe is most of the time is inactive. It literally took me less than 10 minutes to throw everything into the bag. The pork then cooked for around 35 minutes before eating. As Ina says, “How easy is that?”