On this Smoker’s Guide to What’s For Dinner brother Ryan cooks up a real table pleaser: bacon-wrapped, stuffed pork tenderloin.
Ryan pulls back the curtain to make this recipe easier and more delicious, and to help you master more cooks in your home with techniques like:
🔥 Prepping and weaving the perfect bacon lattice
🔥 Pounding out your butterflied pork tenderloin for easier stuffing and rolling
🔥 Multi-temp cooking for the right balance of tenderness, smoky flavor, and crisp bacon
Sit back, relax, and enjoy this cook from Smoke Hollow in southeast Missouri, or follow along and outcook your neighbors with What’s For Dinner at your house tonight.
Ingredients:
- Pork tenderloin
- 12-14 strips thick-cut bacon, preferably same width
- 8 oz cream cheese
- 2 cups shredded gouda
- Butt the Kitchen Sink BBQ rub
- Trauma Hogs BBQ SPG seasoning
- Bread crumbs
- ½-1 tsp salt (we used sea salt)
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
Steps:
- Set out the cream cheese so it will soften at temperature for at least an hour before you’ll need it.
- Make sure you have plenty of wood pellets or fuel and warm your smoker to 180°F.
- Lay your bacon strips directly on the grates of your smoker, cooking at 180 for around 20 minutes or until the bacon glistens as the fat begins to render.
- Thoroughly rinse and pat dry your pork tenderloin, then cut it lengthwise to butterfly it and lay it flat.
- Use a mallet, meat tenderizer, or flat skillet to pound the tenderloin flat.
- In a large bowl, hand mix the cream cheese, salt, pepper, and shredded gouda.
- Weave your bacon into a lattice by laying out 6-7 strips side-by-side, then folding up alternating strips as you tuck in the crossing strips.
- Spread the cheese mixture onto the flattened tenderloin, pressing it smoothly and evenly across the pork.
- Sprinkle bread crumbs over cheese mixture, which will help to bind and hold the mixture inside your butterflied tenderloin as it cooks.
- Roll the tenderloin tightly, leaving the remaining opening facing up. You can add toothpicks to hold it together if you would like.
- Season the entire pork tenderloin with a base layer of Trauma Hogs SPG, then a layer of Smokin’ Brothers Butt The Kitchen Sink BBQ rub.
- Lay the bacon weave over your tightly-wrapped pork tenderloin, then tuck the remaining parts of the lattice underneath. This is another spot you can use toothpicks if you choose to.
- Carefully transfer everything to the grill. We cup, lift, then gently set the wrapped, stuffed tenderloin directly on the grates. You can choose to set it on a strip of aluminum foil to gather any cheese mixture that might drip out.
- Cook at 180°F for one hour.
- After an hour, turn your grill up to 250°F. Continue to cook until the inside pork has reached your desired temperature—we cooked to 150°F internal temp.
- After temperature is reached remove the pork tenderloin and let it rest. We waited about 10 minutes.
- Remember to remove any added toothpicks, slice, and serve.
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