Delicious Pork Tenderloin

Today's recipe is a delicious pork tenderloin we made last week, kind of from a recipe, but also on the fly a little based off of what we had in the kitchen.  We knew we wanted pork tenderloin, but we were like, "how do we make it so delicious we can't even stand it?"  So we googled all over the internets and we came up with a base idea of what to do.  We adapted most of it from This Mommy Cooks, you can see the similarities there from ours.

Ingredients:

• About 2 1/2 or so lbs. of pork tenderloin (we had 2.25)
• 1/4 c. brown sugar
• 1 packet of Italian dressing mix
• 1/2 c. teriyaki sauce 
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 tblspn olive oil
• Enough bacon to drape over just the top of the pork (we used our leftover bacon that was pre-cut in half from our jalapeno recipe!)

Directions:

1. Preheat that oven to 425 degrees.
2. Combine all of the ingredients minus the pork and bacon in a bowl so that they're mixed evenly.
3. Lay your pork in your baking dish, and cover with bacon.  Like I said, we just laid ours over the top versus wrapping it (which I would do if we were grilling it.)
4. Once the bacon is on, pour the marinade/sauce over the top of the tenderloins.  I also used a ladle to really cover it again.
5. Pop it in the oven for 20 minutes.  Remove and re-lade that sauce over the top of the pork again.
6. Back in the oven for another 20 minutes. (25 if not following the next step/hate crispy bacon.) Sidenote:: Use your meat thermometer! I'd like to think most people know this, but meat is about getting to a temperature, not cooking for a set period of time. For pork, you're looking to hit about 145-150 as prescribed by the USDA.  See here for more info on that.
7. Get that broiler ready, and pop it under the broiler for about 4-5 minutes or until the bacon is to your desired crispiness.
8. Once it's done there, take it out and let it rest for about 5-10 minutes before slicing it.

Then slice it up-thinly or thick like we did, and enjoy that awesomeness.

Here are a couple variations I would try:

• Mix the marinade and let it really soak in for a couple days or at least overnight in the fridge.  
• Ours got pretty well done, but was still really tender and juicy, make sure to watch that internal temp!
• Swap teriyaki for soy sauce
• Grill it rather than use the oven! (Hopefully we will have a grill for our balcony again at the new place!)
• Try it without the bacon and just marinade for a long time instead.

Linking with Taste of Tuesday of course! And My Thirfty Chic and Sapphire Bee for the Anything & Everything Blog Hop! AND my favorite northern belle, Lisette.