How To Make Bacon Wrapped Pork Tenderloin

So, I've just got some streaky bacon, 4 rashers of streaky bacon, and one whole pork fillet or pork tenderloin - that's the same thing. First of all, you need to prepare the pork tenderloin by taking some of this membrane off. Using a small sharp knife, lift up a little bit of the membrane at one end, grab hold of it and then see if you can kind of saw it off, trying not to take too much of the meat with it and keep on going around to the next piece, and then on the back here, some of the fat can come off.

You don't want to start chopping every single last bit of fat off because what happens is this part will completely come off and that makes it difficult to wrap up, but if you can get most of the white membrane off, that'll be fine. That stops it from being too chewy. I'm going to show you a really quick way of rolling a big sheet of bacon to roll it up in.

Cut the streaky bacon rashers in half, grab some cling film and lay a sheet out on the table. Make it into quite a nice big square so you've got plenty space for the bacon to stretch out, and then put the bacon quite close to each other, probably with about 1 centimetre in between each rasher and you need it to be about as long as the pork tenderloin, so I'll get one more piece there at the end. Get another sheet of cling film, and then grab a rolling pin and just roll the bacon into one big sheet.

This makes the bacon nice and thin, so it holds its shape better when you cook the pork tenderloin with it wrapped around. Or you could use pancetta and slices of Parma ham. Carefully take the top layer cling film off and then you can put some herbs on top of the bacon if you'd like.

This time I've got sage and I'll just scatter a few of the herbs. Thyme is nice with pork and bacon, or rosemary. And then, put the pork fillet on, add lots of black pepper, a little bit of salt depending on whether you've got smoked or unsmoked bacon; smoked is going to be a lot saltier and then use the cling film to wrap the tenderloin in the bacon, and it's a really good idea to put that into the fridge for about 20 minutes just to let that bacon set into the right kind of shape.

Get it nice and cold. So, I'm just going to put that in the fridge for 20 minutes also. The pork fillet's had 20 minutes in the fridge and is now going into the oven for about 20-30 minutes at 200 degrees centigrade or gas mark 6, and we're going to test whether the meat is done after about 20 minutes.

With pork, it does want to be reasonably done, even though you can technically serve it medium rare. Most people want it cooked through, so it's going to be fairly firm to the touch when it comes out of the oven, a bit like chicken. So, that's going into the oven.

The pork's now had about 20 minutes in the oven and the bacon has browned a little bit on top. The way to tell if it's cooked in the middle is to get a skewer, put the skewer in, let it sit there for 10 seconds, and then take it out and test on the sensitive bit of your arm here on the back of your wrist. And if it's hot, which it is, then that's cooked inside.

The other way to tell is just by pressing it and you'll see chefs doing this a lot. They're just feeling that it's nice and firm. So if you put your thumb to your little finger and then feel this muscle down at the bottom of your thumb, that should be nice and firm.

That's how well done meat feels. So, you can tell how done the meat is by how squishy it is. If you put your thumb to your first finger, that muscle's very squidgy, and as you move it towards your little finger, it firms up.

That's how you tell whether it's rare, medium rare, medium, or well done. With pork, we want it to be medium to well done. It's also important to let the meat rest for about 5 minutes after it comes out of the oven just to let all the juices redistribute themselves throughout the meat so that they all don't come gushing out when you try and carve it.

I'm going to move this onto t