Slow-Rosted Pork with Onions, Apples, and Cider

Hello!
Ever have one of those days when you get into the kitchen and think you have everything you need only to find you're missing one crucial ingredient? Well, that is today! This should have had shallots, but instead I used small mild onions because I didn't have shallots. Oh well! When you need to, improvise. This was also the case with the cider. After looking all over the supermarket, I couldn't find cider so I used unfiltered apple juice. I'd say this turned out OK. The pork came out a bit drier than I'd like but the flavor was pretty good. It was definitely NOT worth the time it took to cook though. It might have been better if I did it in the crockpot, but this was roasted in the oven so I had to keep a better eye on it to make sure it didn't burn. That meant peeking in the oven (through the glass) every 20-30 minutes for an hour and a half. This took over 2 hours to cook and although its mostly hands off I just didn't enjoy cooking it. The reason I'm sharing it is I think with a little tweeking it could be really good. The sauce you make to go over it was excellent and unique. Here is what it looked like when I served it up with porcini mushroom and sage mashed potatoes and some salad. I think this would make a nice fall meal if done in the crockpot... Let me know what you think!

Ingredients:
1- 3lb pork loin roast
Salt and pepper
15 whole shallots (I used 5 small mild yellow onions peeled and cut in half)
3 apples, peeled, cored and quartered
2 cups apple cider (I used unfiltered Apple juice)
1/4 c. Dijon mustard
1/3 c. fat free greek yogurt

Pre-heat oven 450F. Place the pork in a roasting pan and season generously with salt and pepper. Place the meat in the oven for 20 minutes. While the pork is cooking, peel and cut up the apples and onions.

Lower the heat to 325F. Add the onions, apples and cider and roast until meat reaches an internal temperature of 160F

The unfiltered apple juice

Adding the apples, onions, and apple juice to the pork loin before cooking further

After cooking for almost an hour and a half. I let out a string of 4 letter words when I saw how burnt the apple juice looked...

Remove the meat from the pan, place on a serving platter and scatter the onions and apples around it (OMG this is totally written by a Junior leaguer! Who the heck "scatters" onions and apples around meat? Maybe that's why this wasn't the best, I didn't scatter them well enough). I was so distracted by the wording I didn't take a picture of my scattered pork roast. Sorry folks!

Skim the excess fat from the liquid in the roasting pan.

Ummmmm,liquid? What liquid? More like burn and syrup. Maybe I needed a smaller pan to get liquid? Crap.

Add 1/2 c. of water, then reduce over high heat by half. Stir in mustard and greek yogurt.

If you could see my face you'd see a dubious expression on my face. I was thinking how the heck is this going to taste? This looks burnt and caramelized, but mostly burnt, yuck. But I can't not finish this...

Mmmm, doesn't that look yummy? Blech! But I will trudge on with my yucky looking goo!

Holy crap! It turned into sauce after all! What do you know? Maybe this is salvageable after all!

Pour some of the sauce over the roast and serve the rest on the side (NOTE: I tasted it before I put it over the roast to make sure I wasn't putting burnt yucky stuff over it and it was pretty good!)

My best version of "scattering" onions and apples around the pork loin. I drizzled some sauce over the loin and then onto the sliced piece, but when it was just drizzled it looked nasty so I spooned more over until it made that nice orange tint to the meat. Although that is not a normal color you see on meat, I think it works! And if you don't like the flavor as proof from the picture you could use it as self tanner for that nice orange-y glow.

Tastes much better than it looks, haha!

So that's the recipe. I think it would have been much better in the crockpot for 3 hours on high or 6 hours on low so I wouldn't need to keep checking it over and over, and maybe the apple juice wouldn't have burned like it did (even though it was still functional as a sauce component). The sauce was a good idea. Mustard and apple juice based over pork? Great idea! The execution of this dish... much to be desired. If you give this a try yourself, please let me know if it worked out better for you or if you tried it in the crockpot and it was good.
Happy Eating!