Marinate All Pork in Shio Koji
If I had to pick my favorite 2018 ingredient, it would be shio koji . Made with fluffy grafted rice, salt and water, this traditional Japanese pasta gives zesty depth and miso-like umami to anything you spread it on, and hanging overnight in this product will do wonders for your (uncured) pork. …
“But Claire, didn’t you do it with the pork chops , and they’re okay?” Yes, but it was my fault, not the shio koji. I didn’t give the pasta enough time to do its funky job – four hours is n’t enough . Allowing a full 24 hours to soften, flavor, and soften will result in a piece of meat that is completely saturated with a salty and slightly sweet nutty flavor from end to end. In short: I buried the pork in a cup of shio-koji, then fried it backwards and it was so good that I ate about a pound of pork in 10 minutes. (To balance this intense and sudden protein intake, I also ate four (4) kumquats.)
If you eat pork, you should. You can buy shio koji at most Asian grocery stores or cook it yourself , although it takes about a week to do, depending on how cold your kitchen is. After you get the Salted Miracle Pasta, all you need is pork tenderloin (or any other kind of raw pork).
For every two pounds of pork, take a cup of shio-koji and spread it over all the meat. Place the pork in a freezer bag, refrigerate it for 24 hours, and try other fun activities while you wait for the grafted rice to do its wonderful job. At the end of the day of waiting, wipe the shio koji off the pork with a paper towel, then preheat the oven to 250 ℉. Place the pork on a wire rack inside the baking sheet, then cook in the oven until the internal temperature is 15 degrees above your preferred pork temperature. (I like my pork to be slightly pink 135, so I took my pork for 120.)
Remove the pork from the oven and melt at least half a stick of butter in a hot skillet until it begins to froth and brown. Add the pork and sauté on all sides, bathing constantly in brown oil, until it reaches the target temperature (which, again, is 135 ℉ in my case). Remove from the pan, pour on top of the still hot oil, cover with a lid. foil and let the beast rest for at least five minutes, ten if you can.