Month: March 2022

Bourbon Rotisserie Pork Loin

Dr. J.D. WilkinsLeave a comment

I’m starting a new adventure on my blog. For the past few months I’ve only posted bible studies and the occasional option or observation style article. Today is the first share on my new endeavor to learn more about cooking, grilling, and rotisserie recipes to try.

In 2021 my wife and I did a remodel in our backyard with one feature which has a particularly high value for me. The new DCS natural gas grill with rotisserie option was a great decision.  I like to grill much of the time, I also have an electric smoker which I use regularly.  But this new rotisserie option was a whole new thing for me.  Most of the people I’ve talked to love the rotisserie chicken available in the local food marketplace.  And I have and will do chicken many times in the future.  However today, I was to give you a birds eye view my process for cooking Bourbon Pork Loin on the rotisserie.

This is a 2.05 lb pork loin, which will be enough for the dinner, and a leftover meal or sandwiches.

I started with a wet rub to add flavor to the pork loin overnight.  Light brown sugar, coarse black pepper, brown spicy mustard, paprika, garlic powder and onion powder. After whisking the dry ingredients together in a bowl, I covered the pork loin all over with the brown spicy mustard, and put the dry mixture on both sides. It looked like this in the basting bag, before going into the refrigerator for at least 12 hours, mine sat for about 15 hours.  I rolled all the air out of the bag wrapping it tightly so no air could infiltrate.

About an hour before cooking the pork loin I took it out of the refrigerator and brought it to room temperature, about 45 minutes on the counter. You can see that I tied the pork loin with cooking string to keep a uniform shape while it cooks. After placing the pork loin on the rotisserie spit, I went to work on the Mop for basting the pork loin as it cooked.

The Mop includes bourbon whiskey, light brown sugar, 1/4 small pureed yellow or sweet onion, ketchup, dark corn syrup and more spicy brown mustard. When the mop was mixed and ready, I fired up the rotisserie burner on the grill allowing plenty of time to get to the correct cooking temperature.

Here is a short video of the pork loin turning while the burner is lit to a bright orange indicating it is time to get this show on the road!

I cooked this pork loin for a little over 2 hours 45 minutes, left it on the spit, and covered it with aluminum foil to let it rest for about 20 minutes.

For the final phase of the meal I made Almanzo’s Fried Apples N Onions on the stovetop.

2 Fuji apples peeled, cored and sliced, the other ¾ of the sweet/yellow onion cut into matchstick sized pieces, brown sugar, and some ground cinnamon.

Melting a ½ cup of butter in a sauce pan, then adding all the ingredients together and cooking about 15-20 minutes, my side dish was finished.

After taking the apples and onions off the heat to cool a little before serving it is time to slice the pork into ¼ or ½ inch slices for plating.

Here is the dinner plated and ready to eat!  It was amazing to me how well the apples and onions paired with this pork loin.  The juices from the side dish made a great sauce adding even more flavor to the pork.  It was time well spent and a great adventure in cooking.

One last note… these are not my original recipes, I found them by searching for rotisserie options online.  For the exact details for these recipes, the links are here:

Pork Loin recipe

Apples N Onions recipe

Going Somewhere

Dr. J.D. WilkinsLeave a comment

In my distant past I read books. By this I mean I preferred hardcover books to paperback, and I shunned those who purchased the first electronic reading devices as though they had a serious and contagious illness to which I was vehemently determined not to succumb. As I said this was my distant past.

For the first time in too many years, two weeks ago while pondering the beautifully leather bound classics my wife inherited from her father at his recent passing, I determined to pluck one from the shelf and read it. I did this as much to honor the man who willed us these books, as to simply read an actual book. Much of my reading over the last 15 years or so has been using my Kindle reader on my mobile devices. So yes, I did succumb to the evil electronic readers available today.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the pages of a book never read, a book which had been printed and bound, and boxed and shipped, then put on a shelf to live out its days, unread. Instantly I was greeted with the fragrant musky scent of old paper and leather. My mind raced back to former days and the joy of buying that hardcover book and breaking it in, before ever reading a word. I did this now with a leather bound copy of Treasure Island, originally titled The Sea Cook A Story for Boys, first published in 1883.

My copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book was printed and published in 1975 as a limited edition by the Franklin Library, Franklin Center, Pennsylvania. It includes copies of the original illustrations by N.C. Wyeth and used by permission from Charles Scribner’s Sons. From first to last these 305 pages of story kept me captivated for days. I highly recommend this book, however, the point is that it served as a bridge for me. A bridge back to the joys of reading an actual book you can hold in your hands.

Is the story less rich or less enticing when read electronically? No. Does the meaning and moral of the story diminish in anyway when read electronically? No. But that is not my point. It probably won’t change my lifestyle of using my mobile devices to read a book when I’m out to lunch without my wife, or when I’m on vacation, or at any other time when it is necessary or convenient to do so. The Bridge part is that I’m now going somewhere. I’m going back in time to that place where one of the best parts of my day was to sit down with a good book and read.

Everyone has good intentions. I do too, having the intention to read more than just one of these leather bound classical works. I’m not sure I can do it in my lifetime, for while there only 88 of these beautiful and colorful books, they include works and titles that are very heady reads.

The Tragedies of Sophocles, Political Writings by John Stuart Mill, The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Thucydides – The Peloponneisan War, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Pensees by Blaise Pascal, and the Trail by Franz Kafka.

It might take me a year or two to get through just these 8 books and there are 80 more of the same vein, all classical works in their own right. So I may have good intentions to read all 88 before I die, and while it remains a noble crown to achieve should I do it, I’m 68 years old in a couple of days, so it seems a daunting endeavor.

So there before is The Bridge. I would never have to purchase another book in my lifetime to fill my mind with thoughts above my own, more brilliant than my own, more entertaining than my own. It is a bridge which I’ve set my foot upon and I dare not turn back. I wonder if I’ll make it all the way across…

#WordPrompt