Pressure Cooker Pork Loin

For Thanksgiving, my mother and I tried an experiment, which I called "duelling pork loins." She cooked hers in the oven, in the way she traditionally does it, with soaked dried apricots and fresh ginger. I bought her a stovetop pressure cooker a while ago, which she is too frightened to use by herself, but she will let me use it at her house, so I cooked a pork loin in it with rosemary (a herb my whole family loves).

In preparation for this, I read a whole bunch of recipes. I got results ranging from "don't cook pork loin in the pressure cooker; it will be stringy and tough," to "cook for 15 minutes," to "cook for 3 hours." So I used my experience (which, incidentally, was zero when it came to cooking meat in the pressure cooker) and guesstimated the entire thing.

How did it turn out?

Delicious!

Here's what I did: I heated a little olive oil in the pressure cooker, and seared the pork loin on all sides. Except for the oil used in the initial searing, I added no oil or other fat. I took out the pork loin, let the pot cool, added four long branches of fresh rosemary, put in a steamer basket, added about 1 1/2 cups of water, and put the pork loin back in. I locked the lid, and let it cook for 20 minutes under pressure, then used natural release (actually we sat down and had a glass of iced tea, and when we went back to check on it the lid was unlocked). We temped the pork loin and found it was done. At that point we added salt and pepper and let it rest while we cooked sweet potatoes and zucchini. Yes, you read that right, I did not salt the pork loin before cooking!

The loin was tender and juicy, and every bite (even in the very middle of the innermost slice) was infused with fresh rosemary flavor. There was virtually no difference in texture or juiciness between the two loins and I'm sure we'll be doing this again!