Pork Tenderloin with Mushroom Sour Cream Sauce

Tonight I made pork tenderloin for the first time. I had no idea how to cook it so I did an online recipe search. I had to work with limited ingredients as I haven't done my full beginning-of-the-month shopping trip yet, but I had some fresh ingredients from our Costco run today (which is why I had pork tenderloin to begin with). I found this recipe for Pork Tenderloin in Sour Cream Sauce. The sauce sounded delicious, but I didn't like that the tenderloin would be cut before cooking and then cooked on the stove top. I wanted to roast it. So I found some oven cooking directions for pork tenderloin online and proceeded to make the following:

Pork Tenderloin with Mushroom Sour Cream Sauce

Ingredients

1 pork tenderloin

1-2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1/2 tsp ground sage

1/2 tsp dried rosemary

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp coarse black pepper

2-3 tbsp butter

1/2 small white onion, chopped

about 8 large white mushrooms, sliced

salt and pepper to taste

1/4-1/3 cup beef stock

1 cup sour cream

1 tbsp flour

about 1 cup egg noodles

12-14 asparagus spears

2 tbsp grated gruyère cheese

sea salt to taste

Method

Preheat oven to 425°F and heat a large skillet over medium high heat.

While skillet is heating, combine sage, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Brush pork tenderloin with olive oil then rub spice mixture all over, making sure it sticks. Brown tenderloin on all sides in hot skillet, transfer to a baking dish, and place in oven for 20-25 minutes until cooked through. If you have a meat thermometer, it should read between 150° and 165° when done. Remove from oven, cover loosely with foil, and let rest for 5-10 minutes before slicing.

Without cleaning the skillet, lower temperature to medium and melt the butter. Add chopped onions to the butter and sauté for a minute or two. Then add the mushrooms and cook for another 5 minutes or so until mushrooms are soft. Next add the beef stock (I just use powdered stock mix and add water, but you can use boxed stock as well) and salt and pepper to taste (remember that there's salt in the stock too so don't overdo it!). Simmer for a couple more minutes, then drain the liquid into a cup. In a separate small bowl, combine sour cream with flour and then pour the drained liquid into the sour cream, stirring constantly. I used a whisk to ensure there were no lumps. Add the sour cream mixture back to the skillet with the mushrooms and onions, stir to combine, and heat through.

While you're making the mushroom sour cream sauce, put several cups of water to boil in a medium size pot, salt the water, and add the egg noodles once the water boils. They only take about 5 minutes to cook so try to time it accordingly. I put the noodles in just before I took the tenderloin out of the oven and the timing worked well. Once I drained the noodles, I just put a lid on the pot to keep them warm until I was ready to plate the meal. By the way, you can use any kind of egg noodles that you'd like; I used Catelli Healthy Harvest Whole Wheat Egg Noodles for some added nutrition over regular egg noodles.

During all of this you're also going to need to put a deep skillet or pot with a couple inches of water on to boil. (The trickiest part of this meal is juggling all the different things that need to be cooked and getting the timing right - good luck!) Once the water's boiling, add the asparagus spears (with the tough ends cut off) and simmer for several minutes until asparagus is tender but not squishy. Drain water.

Now it's time to plate everything. Place hot asparagus spears on one side of plate and top with grated gruyère cheese and sea salt. Portion noodles onto one quarter of the plate and place the sliced tenderloin on the remaining quarter. Scoop or pour the mushroom sour cream sauce over the meat and noodles. Serve immediately. I plate individual portions since it's just me and my hubby, but if you want to serve this to more people, put the asparagus on a serving dish and top with cheese and salt, and combine the noodles with tenderloin on another serving dish and pour sauce over them both.

I was absolutely thrilled with how delicious this meal was, since it was a bit of a shot in the dark. Bill loved it as much as I did and I will definitely be making this again.