Stuff the Pork with Pork Crock Pot Pork Tenderloin (Get it? it's Pork).

I've owned a crock pot for 10 years and used it maybe 5 times. But I've been looking up crockpot recipes lately in anticipation of some spring time snow days. Since we're getting buried up to our eyelids today, I thought today would be a good day to start. I didn't find anything I loved, so I'm tweaking one for pork chops. This recipe starts with about 20 minutes of prep, but it's totally worth it. My house has smelled BEYOND delicious all day. For some reason I didn't think to take photos until just now, so I'll be as descriptive as possible to make this extra easy.  This was also a total win on the kids friendly paleo menu. Both kids LOVED this and even asked for seconds. (I may or may not have told them it was chicken....)

Ingredients:

1 trimmed pork tenderloin: 2-3 lbs
1 tablespoon of your favorite cooking oil
6 large strips of bacon cut into bite sized chunks
3 granny smith apples, peeled and cut into bite sized chunks
1 medium whole head of garlic (It's annoying but again, so worth it) peeled, crushed and cut into large bits)
1 cup of raw, unsalted pecans
10 green onions, chopped
1 lemon (for zesting at the end)

cooking string or twine cut into 5-6 15 inch pieces for binding loin (that sounds dirty).

Directions:

Pre-prep: toss a tablespoon of your favorite cooking oil (I used coconut) into a skillet. Put bacon in and cook until it's about 80% cooked and browning. Toss in the apples and garlic. Cook until bacon is about 90% cooked. Use a slotted spoon and stuffing mix from pan and let cool. Keep the bacon grease in the pan and turn off the heat. Throw the onions into the pan but don't cook them. Just toss them and coat them in the bacony fatty goodness.

On a cutting board, lay out your cut pieces of twine about 2 inches apart from each other. Most tenderloins are already cut down the center and fall into two pieces. Hold them together and center tenderloin on twine pieces. Stuff the center of the tenderloin with the half of bacon-apple-pecan stuffing, and then tie the pieces of twine individually around the tenderloin so it's completely bound with stuffing cascading out the top.

Line the bottom of your crock pot with half of the onion/bacon grease goodness. Place bound tenderloin on top. Dump the rest of the stuffing on top of the tenderloin and let it fall and fill the bottom portion of the pot. Cover and cook. All. Day.

You can cook this either on Low for 8 hours, or for the first two hours on high, and then 3-4 hours on low. Pork's internal temp needs to be 145 degrees to be servable. There is no broth or anything in this recipe, but the pork will ooze juices all day. For the last hour, I scooped the juices and poured them back over the pork just to let it marinate even more. Remove tenderloin and let it stand 10 minutes before serving (it will continue to cook while you do this). You can serve it with some of the filling from the bottom of the pan the way it is, or smash it up in a bowl to make it more like applesauce and line the tenderloin with it when you serve it.  Be sure to cut off twine before serving.

I'm planning on serving this on a bed of spinach, so that I have a spinach-bacon-apple salad along with my tenderloin. Plus it's pretty.

Makes 5-6 servings.