Pork loin

If you've read the turkey breast post, you'll know we've never been the biggest fans of pork. It just tastes a bit too.. well, piggy. What we've found is that brining takes away the slightly bitter taste, adds seasoning and makes it a whole different beast altogether. We've been cooking more of it ever since. The risk is it can easily go dry so fattier cuts are good but cooking sous vide, you can go tasty lean without any of the 'hockey puck' swallowing you need to get it down.

One of the best cuts is loin as essentially it's the sirloin of the pig world. Brine it, water bath it, brown it and what you've got is easily sliceable meat with no gristly bits and no waste. What I can't understand is why it's so cheap. Go to a reasonable supermarket, spend £6, cut it into 3 and you've got yourself Sunday roasts for nearly a month (if there's two of you). If I was Welsh, I'd say it was bang tidy, and I don't even know what that means.

Vital statistics : 58 degrees for 4 hours although 3 would probably be plenty

As I've been doing these posts, I've been cutting down on the preparation photos because they're essentially the same each time. If you want to see what it looked like going into the bag, have a mosey at the sirloin post and imagine it a bit paler. Job done.

Looking at the bag as it came out of the water bath, you can see there's a bunch of juices which I'd normally recommend putting into your sauce or gravy, but depending on how heavy you've been with the brining, this might be a bit salty so exercise caution on that one.

Now here's a thing I only noticed when adding the photos for this post. When you pull a vacuum, the bag contracts around the meat and leaves you with a crease that cooks into the joint. If this bothers you, use a bigger bag and the edges'll be away from the meat. It doesn't concern me too much but I might have more of an opinion if the Duchess of Windsor was popping 'round for a bit of dinner.

So after a bit of that special love and attention you only get from kitchen roll, it's into a frying pan for the usual searing. Sous vide at home is largely a similar process each time - bag, water bath, dry, sear. It's leaving me with less to say each time so I'm going to make up stuff for future posts, just to make it a bit more interesting but this time, it's the usual vegetable oil/frying pan combo. Sorry if that's disappointed anyone.

And this is what you get. What you'll notice is two things - I've broken the thin layer of fat on the top through sheer cack-handedness, and my girlfriend's new camera's a bit lovely.

And onto the carving which is the main bit because we get to find out if it's deliciously moist or just a bit raw in the middle. In the background is a steamer, not the timer from a pipe bomb, just in case you were thinking of phoning the authorities.

And the photos look great but using a water bath for this is all about cooking the meat without drying it out so how did it do? Fab actually, thanks for asking.

And so for the verdict. I'll fess up, we've cooked this a few times now and it's been perfect every time. The pork gets seasoned by the brine and the water bath makes it super juicy and fillet steak tender. Personally we wouldn't cook pork if we didn't have a water bath, it really makes that much of a difference.

Give it a go. If you don't like it, you don't like pork.*

* Religious reasons apart