Great Plates: New Year's Day Pork and Sauerkraut

Start your farm-to-table year off right on January 1 with Veda Sankaran’s beautifully seasoned New Year’s Day Pork and Sauerkraut.

We love farm-to-table freshness from dawn to dusk. Four seasons a year. Day in and day out. Our wonderful recipe creator, chef, and food stylist Veda Sankaran channeled our “buy fresh, buy local” passion into a collection of farm-driven recipes perfect for the harvest season. Let’s get out there and savor the next two months of farmers’ markets and farmstands.

This dish is built around a pork tenderloin from Blackberry Meadows Farm soaked in flavors of orange zest, spices, After the Fall hard cider, and Clarion River Organics sauerkraut.

Oven Braised Pork & Sauerkraut

Ingredients

2 ½ lb pork tenderloin or 2 smaller tenderloins

1 ½ tsp Spicewalla cracked coriander pepper mix*

¾ tsp black pepper**

¾ tsp Kashmiri chili powder

1 ½ tsp dark brown sugar

3 tbsp oil

1 tsp allspice berries, coarsely crushed

4 bay leaves

1 white onion, halved, thinly sliced, then cut into thirds

1 Honeycrisp apple, cored and thinly sliced

1 ½ tbsp crushed garlic**

¾ tsp orange zest from approximately 1 large navel orange

½ cup hard apple cider, such as After the Fall ciders

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

3 cups sauerkraut, drained

2 ½ cups chicken broth

1 tsp black pepper**

½ tsp dark brown sugar

1 ¾ cups cubed red potatoes

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Rub the coriander pepper spice mix, black pepper, Kashmiri chili powder, and brown sugar on all sides of the pork loin(s). Then, heat 3 tbsp of oil in a large Dutch oven. Once it is hot enough, sear the loins, remove, and set aside.

In the same Dutch oven, add the allspice berries and bay leaves, followed by the onions. Stir and cook for a minute, before adding the sliced apples, garlic, and orange zest. Cook for an additional minute, before adding the hard apple cider, apple cider vinegar, and sauerkraut. Stir to combine everything.

Lastly, pour in the chicken broth and sprinkle in the black pepper and brown sugar. Stir again and place the seared pork loin on top of the sauerkraut and apple mixture, pushing it down so it is partially submerged.

Cover and place in the preheated oven to cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Remove from the oven, uncover and add the cubed potatoes, making sure they are submerged. Taste and add a little more brown sugar if needed to balance the sourness of the sauerkraut. Recover and place back in the oven for an additional 1 hour to finish cooking.

*Note 1: If you don’t have Spicewalla cracked coriander pepper mix, substitute with 1 tsp crushed coriander seeds, ½ tsp black peppercorn (crushed,) ¼ tsp paprika, pinch of mustard powder, rosemary, and thyme.

**Note 2: If using black pepper garlic tenderloins, you can omit both the black pepper and garlic from the recipe or keep it in based on your preference.

Round out your New Year’s Day feast with these innovative dishes from Veda Sankaran:

Soba Noodles in Vindaloo Sauce

Devils on Horseback and other great dips and starters

Meatballs in Cranberry Gochujang Sauce

Honey and Ghee Roasted Carrots

Recipes by Veda Sankaran / Photography by Dave Bryce / Styling by Keith Recker / Ceramics by Billy Ritter / With Support from Buy Fresh, Buy Local of Western Pennsylvania and PA Preferred