Brined, Grilled Pork with Apple-Bourbon Chutney

Serves 2 

Pork

• 1 pork tenderloin, appx 1.5 pounds
• Brining salts and spices--you can just do salt, or add a bunch of spices, or buy something. You can't really screw this up--just add a ton of salt to water. 

Chutney

• 1 green apple, peeled or not. I did it unpeeled. cut it into 1/4" pieces, more or less
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup bourbon
• 1/3 cup cranberries
• Lemon juice, to taste (may be from concentrate)
• Kosher salt, to taste

Cooking the pork

Dissolve brining solution in boiling water, according to your recipe--around 1 cup salt and spices to 2 cups water. Add ice cubes--around 1 cup for proportions above. Bring to room temperature or less. Place pork in a Ziploc bag, then add brining solution. Brine for 2-6 hours. We did it for 2 and it was fine. 

Pre-heat the grill to medium, or around 350 - 400 (that's the range on ours). Grill the pork until approaching medium rare, around 12 minutes total, then let sit for approximately ten minutes. This is why you want to do it on the rare side, so you can let it sit, and cook a little more, and let the juices permeate.

A note on temperature of pork: It used to be, long, long ago, that you were supposed to cook pork to medium, to kill trichinosis spores. However, the U.S. pork supply has been free from trichinosis for decades. When I was in culinary school, they pointed this out and urged us to cook pork medium-rare, just as we would beef or lamb--even so, I was always a little chary of doing this at home. Recently though, even the U.S. F.D.A., one of the most cautious groups around, declared that pork could indeed be served medium-rare without any health risk. And boy, it is SOOOO much better. 

Cooking the chutney

Melt the butter. Dissolve the brown sugar into the butter. Cook the apples till they get a little soft. Add bourbon and cranberries to sauce. Continue to cook and add salt and lemon juice till it achieves desired thickness and flavor.