Last week Bret came home with a four-pack of Costco Pork Sirloin Tip Roasts. They were so inexpensive – less than four dollars per 2 1/2 lb. roast – and looked so good. I’d never heard of this particular cut of pork, but found a ton of recipes for them on Pinterest. Most of the posts started out…”my husband brought home a four-pack of Costco Pork Sirloin Tip Roasts….”

I found this one by Barefeet in the Kitchen and thought it looked wonderful. Also, I had all the ingredients and that always spurs me on to greatness!

The combination of spices for this roast was perfect. The cayenne gave it a kick, so adjust that if you don’t particularly like that kick, and the oregano added such a nice layer of flavor. Definitely don’t forget to use the oregano.

The only change I made to her wonderful recipe below was to lower the salt from 1 tablespoon of kosher salt to 1 teaspoon of table salt. I used a tablespoon of table salt (wrong) and it made for a very salty crust. Kosher salt has bigger flakes, so wouldn’t have made it so salty, but use whichever you have. Just be sure and cut it down to 1 teaspoon if you’re using table salt.

I was searching for so long through the junk drawer for the meat thermometer (a must for any kitchen – the meat thermometer, not the junk drawer) that the roast temperature ended up at 155 degrees – a little beyond the recommended temperature. Still, after resting, it was perfectly cooked, juicy and tender.

Bret diced up some of the leftovers in the morning and made a scrambled egg, cheese and pork wrap. We’ve also had pork sandwiches and I plan on chopping up the remainder and adding it to a cream-based pasta dish. I love it when leftovers can be used like that!

5 from 2 votes

Herb-Rubbed Sirloin Tip Pork Roast

****Excellent rub for any kind of pork roast. Makes a superb crust and it gets even better with leftovers!

Ingredients

1 1/2 to 2 lb sirloin tip pork roast
1 1/4 tbsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp table salt
2 tbsp olive oil

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put all of the ingredients into a small bowl and whisk until blended. Let it sit for a few minutes for it to meld together the spices and become a bit thicker. It will be a paste-like consistency.
Rinse the roast and pat it dry. Rub the spice mixture all over the roast, completely covering all sides, nooks and crannies (easiest to use your hands for this). Line a roasting pan with aluminum foil and place the roast on a rack in the pan. Do not cover.
Roast for 1 to 1.5 hours and remove from the oven when the meat reaches an internal temperature of 145 to 150 degrees. Let rest for about 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

Recipe Notes

Tips and Stuff: My roast was a little over 2 lb., so I cooked it the entire hour and a half. It was perfect. Be sure and use smoked paprika. It adds a great flavor.

Bret saw a rack of pork at Costco several weeks ago, thought it looked really good, and brought it home to see what we could do with it. It looked awfully fancy to me, what with the row of exposed ribs just waiting for those little toque blanche (little white chef hat thingies) to be popped on them. Well, since we only had one rack we really couldn’t make the “crown” as it needed a much larger rack, so I began scouring the internet for a recipe that sounded good and do-able. I stumbled across askchefdennis.com and found a fantastic recipe for the pork which included ingredients we already had on hand. Great! Here we go with our first rack of anything adventure.

We found the appropriate pan along with a rack, scrounged through our vegetables to see what we could roast along with it, oiled and rubbed the rack and popped it in the oven according to instructions. The rub made a delicious crust!

Sorry, no toques available for the rib bones – they had to go bare this time. Except for a few of the ingredients (didn’t have fresh garlic, no onion on Bret’s request and no celery), we went fairly strictly by the cooking instructions. I had some yellow squash, so added it to the vegetables the last hour of cooking, since squash cooks more quickly than the other vegetables. The result was an awesome pork rack and great roasted vegetables! Each chop was thick and juicy and the rack provided eight chops which we spread over four different meals. We looked at each other after several bites the first night and agreed that this was the best homemade meal we had ever made! I would’ve paid big bucks at a restaurant for this.

It was much easier than I ever thought and we will definitely keep this in our menu rotation. If you can’t find the pork racks at Costco (sometimes they’re seasonal), ask your butcher to special order or try Central Market.

Oven Roasted Rack of Pork

*****Courtesy of Chef Dennis Littley at askchefdennis.com. Outstanding pork that would make a beautiful dish for a special occasion, as well as an every day meal!

Servings: 8 -10

Ingredients

1, 8-bone center cut rack of pork
Olive Oil
Sea Salt
Black Pepper
Montreal Steak Seasoning
2 carrots rough cut
1 small onion rough cut and include skins
2 stalks of celery rough cut
6 cloves garlic peeled

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
In a roasting pan, add your rough cut vegetables.
Rinse the rack of pork well and pat dry.
Place rack fat side up, on top of cut veggies
Apply liberal amount of olive oil, rubbing it into the meat.
Sprinkle entire rack with sea salt, pepper and then with an extra coating of Montreal Steak Seasoning (use a good amount of Montreal seasoning, forming a light crust).
Place pan in preheated oven at 450 degrees for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes reduce heat to 325 and continue to roast for approximately 2 hours or until internal temperature on the outside of the racks has reached 160 degrees. This will ensure the outside cuts of the pork are done while the center cuts are not cooked quite as much.
Remove the rack from the oven, placing on a cutting board and allow to rest for 10 minutes before slicing the meat. This will allow all the juices to remain in the rack, rather than have them run all over the plate, making the meat dry.
While the rack is resting, place 2 cups of water in the roasting pan and place on the oven and with a spoon loosen all the baked-in meat scraps from the pan, making your pan gravy.
Strain out all of the vegetable pieces and any residue.
Cut the rack along the bones, making even portions of the pork; serve with your pan gravy and your favorite sides.

Recipe Notes

Tips and Stuff:

Notes from Chef Dennis: When you remove a larger cut of meat from the oven it will continue to cook and the temperature of the meat will rise 10 more degrees. Pork can be eaten at lower temperatures than 165 degrees, but if your entire party would like the meat very well done, you can continue to roast the rack until the center cuts are 155 degrees.

My Notes: After the roasting was finished, I lifted the rack out in order to let it rest, and instead of adding water to the vegetables and straining, I put a pat or two of butter with the vegetables and mixed them along with the small amount of juice the pork had generated while cooking. It made perfect vegetables to serve with the pork. We only ate two chops at a time, so I wrapped the rest of the rack in foil and when we were ready to eat the next two chops, I cut them away from the rack, put them in foil in a preheated oven at 325 degrees for 25-30 minutes (check after 20 minutes). They didn't dry out, as the inside chops were less cooked than the outside chops from the original roasting.

Toques off to Chef Dennis for this recipe!

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