Picking Out Pork Loins

I think I've mentioned before that we couldn't get good beef in the city we used to live in. So, we cooked a lot of chicken and pork. I can't say I'd ever done much with pork other than pork chops before we moved here. But seeing how you can't find a good tender pork chop very often, I resorted to pork loins and the crock pot (meat here is generally tough!). I'd lived here for 2 years before I found the really good pork loins though!

 

If you look at this picture, the ones on the left look like what I thought ones in the States looked like. Sometimes a butcher will have them with a layer of fat still along the side of them that you can have him cut off. One time when Brian went to buy me some of these though, the butcher didn't have any and talked him into getting the ones on the right of the picture. They are long and skinny, usually 8-10 inches, and have a much darker, purplish coloring.  I use these for about any kind of pork I cook now that I know about them. They are much more tender. In fact, you can just bake these in the oven and still chew them! The pork loins on the left, at least here, have to be cooked in the crock pot to get them tender enough to eat. Preferably all day on low. I have lots of recipes to share with you using pork loins in the future. One for BBQ pork will come this week. And either type of pork will work for it since its a crock pot dish.