Pellet Smoker Cooking: Hickory Smoked Sicilian Pork Loin

Another cook using BBQ Select hickory pellets given to me by Adam to try.

I am always scouring the net for recipes I can adapt to a smoker. This one caught my eye, Sicilian grilled pork loin with agrodolce grilled peaches. It had a brine for the pork and I thought agrodolce was a variety of peach. It is a Sicilian word meaning sweet & sour. The recipe was by Bobby Flay from foodnetwork. I was a little worried the rest of the family would not like it but I had to try it.

On the smoker I had been doing my pork loins on the fast side at 325 & 350 deg and was not getting a lot of smoke flavor. From my previous pork loin that was stuffed but not brined I found you can do a longer smoke and have smoke flavor if you pull it at 135 to 140 deg.; and tent at least 15 min. before slicing. That’s a little hard for an old school cook that was used to doing pork to 170 deg.

I brined the loin in the honey-rosemary brine over night. I tied it since after brining it insures holding it together. I did it on smoke mode, for 1 ½ hours, my Traeger again holding pretty well at 165 to 170 deg. I then went to 250 deg. and figured it would take another 1 ½ hours. After 1 hour at 250 I was going to turn and insert a temp probe, when I inserted the probe it was already at 134 deg. I fired up my Weber for a sear, turned the smoker down & left the lid open. After the Weber had heated up I seared the loin on two sides.

I tented the loin with foil & a towel and let set ½ hour. I sliced off 5 slices of the loin I would reheat for supper. I slice off a couple bites of the end piece to taste, good! I had already made my agrodolce glaze ahead.

I halved & pitted 4 peaches, it said to use firm peaches, but these were unripe firm & knew they would not be too good.

I had to hustle to do frozen sweet potato fries in the oven, do the apples on the grill, shoe peg white corn in the microwave, cook the apples some more in the microwave, and heat up the pork loin.

I served it all up and served some of the agrodolce sauce over the pork loin. Everyone thought the pork loin was great; my veggie daughter-in-law even ate the end piece I had cut some off of and said it was good.

If you want a different taste treat try this Sicilian pork loin and do the peaches but get firm ripe ones! Be sure to do the agrodolce sauce for the pork; it marries all the flavors!

Link to Pork Loin recipe

Loin brined, seasoned and tied