This Pork Tenderloin Is Simple Enough for a Kid to Cook for Father’s Day

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Prix Fixed, Lifehacker’s menu planning tips column .

This week’s email is a request for a Father’s Day dinner that three (3) 12-year-olds can cook, and I’m very happy about that:

Hi Claire!

I love your writing / recipes and have a menu request. I have 12-year-old triplets hoping to cook Father’s Day dinner for their father.

They have basic cooking skills – they can chop things, use the oven, cook in a pan, follow a recipe, measure correctly, use a mixer, etc. They have cooked and baked before, but they will need specific instructions. For example, unlike the first person, they won’t know when the fish is ready, without the temperature to check (we have meat thermometers) or the time / temperature for the oven. Basically, I think they could follow a plan suitable for an aspiring adult.

We have all the kitchen equipment you’d expect from a country family – oven, mixer, microwave, multicooker, Instant Pot, loads of pots / pans / plates and of course a waffle iron! I’m happy to help, but they would like to cook their own food.

My daughter doesn’t like spicy food. My only son doesn’t trust sauces and prefers plain protein over vegetables. (Though he’s willing to try the sauces if he makes them himself.) The rest of us have no dietary restrictions.

We are flexible about protein and budget. We would have preferred what looked “restaurant-like” like your first speaker, but without such exquisite ingredients that it would be a culinary crime to ruin something! It would be nice if there were some changes to the recipe that they could use in the future.

Thank you for your attention. I know you don’t have kids, but I think it might help other teens / teens too!

I love everything about this letter. I started cooking for myself and my sisters around this age, and I am delighted that you brought them in to prepare Father’s Day meals. I also love that there are three of them, which means that you can assign each of them a dish and then control, cocktail in hand (if that’s what you like – this is how I envision myself as a parent).

Anyway. Grocery stores and press release writers for the beef industry love to promote steaks for Father’s Day, but cooking five separate steaks according to everyone’s preferred doneness is not something I’d want for a teenager or a new chef of any age. Instead, I think kids should cook three large, unpretentious cuts of pork, especially miso marinated pork, ideal for starters. We’ll keep the classic garlic puree and garlic spinach sides. (Twelve years old is a good age to realize that there is never too much garlic.)

I am in awe of this menu and the many lessons it can teach. After cooking a few whole pork tenderloins, at least one of your threes will learn about marinades, reverse frying, icing removal, and the importance of using a meat thermometer. They’ll also learn how to make the creamiest mashed potatoes (with the secret ingredient) and how to best finish the spinach stew (spoiler: it’s honey). A son who hates sauces learns that butter can be a sauce and I love it. (There might also be some brandy, but don’t worry – the ethanol will mostly burn.)

Purchases

But before we get into cooking, let’s shop.

List:

• 3 pork tenderloins, about a pound each (I don’t know how much a 12-year-old eats, but vaguely remember that that’s a lot. I usually recommend two pork tenderloins for five people, but this seems conservative for a home that’s more than half of teens.)
• 1 can of red miso
• 3 lb. yellow potatoes like Yukon Golds
• 1 pint half and half (You will have more, but I wouldn’t want you to drink too little because someone added it to their coffee.)
• A box of salted butter (you won’t be using it all, but this menu needs a lot, and the lack of it would be a tragedy).
• Cheese with a hard finish, such as parma or pecorino.
• Lowry’s Garlic Salt (or any garlic salt, but my favorite is Lowry’s product right now)
• 2 large bunches of spinach
• 2 onions of garlic

Pantry staple you probably have, but you may need to buy:

• Olive oil
• Mayonnaise
• Honey

Plan

Assign a meal to each child. I think someone who doesn’t trust sauces should cook the pork so he can learn how to make a simple pan sauce, but I think all three should go about marinating. It is important for people who eat meat to touch and handle a lot of raw meat to be comfortable with it. The best meat is usually what you marinate, butcher, or otherwise cook with your own hands – so let’s get those hands dirty.

Have the children marinate the pork in miso paste . Miso acts as a drier, pulling out moisture, making the pork lean and giving it a salty, fermented flavor. All the kids need to do is spread the paste all over the meat until a 1/8-inch layer appears on each tenderloin, then toss the tenderloins into plastic freezer bags and let them rest in the refrigerator for 5-8 minutes. clock. After this time, it’s time to start cooking. To keep things as simple as possible, I’m going to write out instructions for each dish separately so that each trio can focus on their task without being distracted by extraneous information.

For triplets with a tenderloin:

Hi baby, I hope you’re excited because you are about to cook three beautiful pieces of pork and you are not going to overcook them. The first thing you need to do is make sure you have a meat thermometer, because you cannot detect temperature changes with your own eyes, unless those eyes are reading the digital display of an instant read meat thermometer. We cook these things until a slightly pink 145 ℉ and we are going to use a method called “reverse frying”, which means you are going to slowly bake them in a low-temperature oven until they reach 130 ℉, then place them in a skillet with a large the amount of oil. Okay, let’s do it. In addition to a meat thermometer, you will need:

• Those 3 clippings that were pickled
• Salted butter stick
• 1/2 cup brandy (Please don’t drink it. I don’t want your mom to be mad at me. I trust you with that.)

Preheat oven to 250 ℉. Remove the clipping from the bag (s) and, holding one end, wipe off excess miso and transfer to a basin or sink (if you have a waste chute). Place the tenderloin on a cutting board and dry again with a paper towel. Stir the miso and paper towels. Lovingly place the tenderloin in a shallow baking dish or baking sheet and when the oven is at 250 ℉, place the pan or leaf on the medium wire rack and set a timer on your phone for 20 minutes. As soon as your phone starts beeping, flip the cutout and set another alarm for 15 minutes. When the alarm sounds, it’s time to check the temperature of each piece of meat. You want to take the tenderloin out of the oven when it reaches 130 ℉, so keep cooking if it’s not quite done yet. Once they reach this temperature, remove them from the oven (and turn it off), get a large stainless steel skillet (or similar) and a piece of butter.

Cut 5 tablespoons of butter from a stick and melt over medium to high heat in a skillet. Once they are completely melted and frothy, place the tenderloins in there and fry them for a couple of minutes on all four sides, until a dark crust forms on each side. It’s okay if it starts to look a little burnt in spots. Many novice chefs are intimidated by burning meat, but the truth is that browning is what gives it its flavor, and – with the exception of poached chicken – pale meat is rarely what you want. Here’s a clipping I made a while back for reference, but to be honest, yours can turn out even darker than this and still be delicious.

Once you have some color on the clipping, do a temporary check and see where everyone dangles. You want to get about 145. Once you hit that – and don’t panic if you’re at a few degrees of heat – remove the tenderloin from the pan, place it on a cutting board, and lightly cover with foil.

Remove the pan from the hotplate (or turn it off if using a gas stove), let the pan cool for a minute, then add the brandy to the pan. It will make a lot of hiss, which is exactly what you want. Scrape off any small browned and burnt pieces from the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon, then let the brandy reduce to about half its volume – it should look cloudy and thicker than it was in the bottle. Turn on the heat if it doesn’t go down fast enough. If you reduce it too much, just add some more brandy and let it decrease again. Brandy is very gentle. (“Brandy ” is also the title of a real, groovy Looking Glass song. Maybe play it while you cook.)

When the brandy has reduced, add the remaining 3 tablespoons of oil and beat to form a sauce for the skillet. No salt is needed – the pork itself is quite salty, but if you wish, you can grind some fresh pepper there. (10 chops are enough.) When you are ready to serve, chop the pork and pour the sauce over the pan. You did it! I am very proud of you! (If you want to level up next time, head to the Asian market and grab a shio koji . The procedure is the same, but the taste is slightly different.)

For triplets with mashed potatoes

Hello. I hope you are not offended that you were assigned to the potato. I know they don’t sound as exciting as pork tenderloin, but they can be fun with. You also have a task to complete the day before lunch, but don’t worry, it’s very simple ( fried garlic ). I’m also going to share with you a family secret: the best, creamiest mashed potatoes contain a little mayonnaise. I know it doesn’t sound very appealing, but you don’t try mayonnaise. (If you don’t tell your sauce-hating brother, he won’t be able to tell it’s in there, but I’ll leave that up to you.) You just add a couple tablespoons, enough for the mayonnaise. acts as an emulsifier – which means it helps the water and fat in the puree work well with each other, so the potatoes are creamy rather than greasy. To make gifts you will need:

• 1 garlic onion
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 3 pounds of yellow potatoes like Yukon gold
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup half and half
• 4 tablespoons salted butter
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• Garlic salt
• Parmesan or pecorino cheese

The day before dinner (which means Saturday, I suppose), make the fried garlic. Preheat oven to 400 ℉, then take the head of garlic and remove the outer paper-covered pieces. Cut about half an inch from the crown to expose the cloves, then place the head in the center of the piece of foil and sprinkle a few teaspoons of oil on the open cloves, tapping the head against the counter top to get the oil in the crevices. Wrap the garlic in foil, place in the oven and wait. Begin checking the garlic after about 40 minutes and remove from the oven as soon as it turns dark and golden and the medium cloves are soft (poke it with a knife to check). Take your prize out of the oven, let it cool slightly, then remove the clove with a tiny fork or pickax of some sort. Transfer them to a bowl, cover loosely with plastic and refrigerate until the next day.

It’s Sunday, and it’s time to stretch your potatoes. Wait for your brother to preheat the oven before you begin. Once he puts the pork in the oven, rinse the potatoes and cut them into quarters. Do not worry about how to clean them; The skins of the yukon are incredibly thin and I love the bitterness they bring to the bowl.

Since you have Instant Pot, let’s use them. The great thing about this particular appliance is that you can plug it anywhere, which means you don’t have to huddle around the stove and oven with the other two. Add a cup of water to the Instant Pot, place the rack there, and pour the quartered potatoes onto the rack. Cook them under high pressure for nine minutes, then manually release the pressure by turning this little switch to the “release” position. Drain the potatoes thoroughly – they will be quite hot – and drain all the water from the liner. Return the insert to the appliance, press the “Sauté” button and set it to “Low”. Add potatoes again and mash with mashed potatoes to remove excess moisture. If you have fries, just paint them directly into the pot. Once the potatoes are well chopped (or chopped), add the butter, cream, and garlic from the day before and mash like hell. Add mayonnaise, crush and mix. (If you’ve chopped the potatoes, you don’t need to mash that much, just stir.) Once the potatoes are mashed and smooth (don’t worry about a couple of small lumps, that’s okay) give it a flavor and add more butter, halves and a half or garlic salt if you think that they need it. Stir again, grate with more cheese on top and serve with the pork.

For a triplet with spinach

Hello, it’s time to give the green thing. I honestly hated spinach very much because I only had soft, soft spinach, but that’s not what you’re going to do, oh no. You are going to cook this spinach overnight and finish with a crispy golden garlic and a little honey. It will be great. To make the healthy side, you will need:

• 2 large bunches of spinach
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• A couple of tablespoons of finely diced butter
• 1 head of garlic
• Salt
• Garlic salt
• Honey

Once your brother has put the pork in the oven, wash the spinach and dry it thoroughly. It is best to use a salad spinner, but you can also roll it up in a clean kitchen towel and let it air dry until the end. Now take the garlic, peel and cut into strips, or crush and coarsely chop. Need notable pieces, so do not feel sorry. (Need help cleaning up? Try heating the cloves in the microwave for 15 seconds .) If you finish all these tasks quickly, ask your mom if she needs help before your brother starts roasting pork. At this point, you need to take a large skillet and heat the olive oil over medium heat for a few minutes. Add the garlic, season with a few large pinches of salt and cook until aromatic, golden and slightly crispy. Remove it from the oil and set aside.

Raise the heat to medium-high and add handfuls of spinach and a few shakes of garlic salt for each handful. Quickly fry the spinach in garlic butter, until it wither, adding tiny cubes oil if the pan starts to dry. Depending on the size of the pan, it is best to work in batches to avoid overcooking half of the spinach. Add as much as the pan can hold, stir and fry until bright green and tender, then remove immediately and transfer to a serving dish. Taste and season with more garlic salt if necessary. Repeat until you run out of spinach, then sprinkle with honey, sprinkle with golden garlic and serve.

For a quick tip on menu planning, please send a request to Claire at claire.lower@lifehacker.com. Be sure to include as much information as possible, including any dietary restrictions, protein preferences, budget, and available cooking equipment. Please be aware that processing time will be at least a week, so please submit inquiries in advance.

More…