Tonight for dinner I took a soup recipe and modified it to fit into keto as well as use up a pork loin that my husband had made last weekend that was just too dry. I don't know about you but I just can never get a pork loin to be delicious and moist to call it "amazing".
Last weekend my husband decided to make a pork loin while we were making Instant Pot Louisianna Style Spare Ribs. It was a great idea since we are already cooking the ribs, we could throw in the loin and have it for other meals during the week. The plan was to make the ribs on Sunday, so he prepared a marinade on Saturday and put the loin in it to give it a nice amount of time to tenderize and soak up some flavor.
One of the things we have learned using the Instant Pot is, roasts are amazing if you sear them over a grill before putting them in the Instant Pot to finish. So while the ribs were in the Instant Pot the pork loin was on the grill getting the outside seared to get some of that grill flavor going. When time was up we just traded places and put the ribs on the grill and the pork loin in the Instant Pot to finish cooking.
So for dinner that night we had a salad, ribs, and some of the pork loin. However, even with the marinading, the pork loin was still dry and disappointing. With that said, I told him I would come up with a soup that we could use the pork loin in.
I thought about what soup would work for pork loin and I even looked up some pork loin soup recipes on the internet but there was not any recipes that sounded great. A favorite soup of mine is Zuppa Toscana of which I have a recipe that I use often. Its an easy soup to make and tastes delicious but how would it work with pork loin. It has sausage in the soup which is a far cry from pork loin.
I needed to add the pork loin and try and make it keto friendly. I started by browning a half pound of bulk breakfast sausage. I used the regular kind with no msg but if you want a little kick get the hot. The breakfast sausage is the most important part of this recipe since the spices in the sausage pretty much is the spices in the soup. If you get just ground sausage you will have to add sausage spices of which there are several. In the long run it is cheaper and easier to just get breakfast sausage.
Anyway, I browned the sausage and then removed it from the pan and set it aside. Then I added onion and garlic to the pan and cooked them until they just started to carmelize. Added the chicken stock to cover the bottom of the pan and deglazed the bottom of the pan. Then I threw in the following, cubed pork loin, browned sausage, cup of peeled and cubed golden beet, a bunch of cleaned radishes, about a handful of cleaned bite size cauliflower, enough chicken broth to cover everything, add salt and pepper too taste, cover and bring to a boil and then simmer until the vegetables are tender.
Then I added 1 can of coconut milk and 1 can of coconut cream. I then got it steaming again but not boiling and I added while stirring a little at a time Parmesan cheese and torn kale. It was ready then but did not look or taste like Zuppa Toscana, this was something different. Was it good? Yes it is delicous but it wasn't Zuppa Toscana it is something else and it does taste different.
So with all that said, I think I may have a new recipe for somekind of golden beet, cauliflower, radish, pork loin cream soup and I need a good name. I was thinking something with zuppa in it since that is soup in Italian but the Italian name for pork loin is some long not so easy name.
I open to suggestions so let me know what you think. Oh and here is a picture of what it looked like.
