Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Pork with Balsamic Tomatoes

This is a staple in my house. My husband requests this dish at least twice a month, sometimes more. It's easy, and super yummy. It's also very easy to make primal/paleo... simply exclude some of the items like flour and corn starch. They're not vital ingredients. Anyways, onward to yumminess!

Ingredients
1-2 lbs pork tenderloin (depending on how many you're feeding)
2-3 cans of diced petite tomatoes (3 cans if you're feeding lots of men)
1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar
1/4 cup chicken broth
4 cloves of garlic, diced
1/4 cup of flour
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

For thickening (optional)
1/4 cup chicken broth
1 teaspoon corn starch


Here is all the ingredients.
Cut up your pork into portion sized pieces. Salt and pepper as desired.
Coat in flour.
All my lovelies... I'm feeding 3 men tonight.
Heat oil over medium high heat.
Brown your pork until golden on all sides but don't cook all the way through.
See the lovely crust forming?
Remove the pork from the pan and set aside for later.
Lower the heat a bit on your pan and toss in your garlic. Let them brown for about a minute but make sure they don't burn. Burnt garlic is bitter and gross. Totally not what we want.
Measure out your Balsamic vinegar....
... and your chicken broth.
Open your tomatoes and let them drain. 
Add your vinegar and broth to your pan. Make sure to scrap the bottom of your pan to get all the yummy tidbits from browning the pork up. Let it simmer for a few minutes.
Add your tomatoes.
Stir to combine...
Add your pork back into the pan.
Cover and let them finish cooking for about 15 minutes. Every now and again turn your pork. 

At this point, I'll sometimes take a small amount of chicken broth and a teaspoon of corn starch, mix them together, then add it to the pan to thicken the sauce. But this can be omitted. I didn't get a photo of this step. Whoops.

And you end up with this! 

I love to serve it over fresh spinach. It's also amazing over rice. Even my picky two year old will eat this. It's that good.