Bacon-Wrapped Pesto Pork Tenderloin

Super Bowl week. I take this seriously. Not the game itself necessarily — I have a healthy relationship with sports where I care enough to watch and not enough to be ruined when my team loses — but the food. Super Bowl Sunday is the one day a year when half the country sits around a television and eats communally, and I have strong feelings about what that food should be.

I spent Tuesday evening doing prep. I made a dry rub for a full rack of baby backs and put them in the fridge overnight. Wednesday I prepped a batch of smoked queso — cubed Velveeta, roasted poblanos, jalapeños, and a handful of crispy shredded brisket from the freezer, all put in a cast iron skillet and set on the far end of the smoker for two hours. The smoke does something to queso that a microwave simply cannot replicate. This is not an opinion; this is a fact.

Lily stopped by Friday evening with James. They've started showing up together, which I notice and do not comment on. James brought a six-pack of sparkling water for me without being asked, which tells you everything you need to know about him. He knows I don't drink, he didn't make a deal about it, he just brought something I could drink. Good man.

We all sat on the back porch in the fifty-degree Houston evening and I showed James how I had the smoker configured. He was genuinely interested, asked real questions, not the polite questions that people ask when they want to seem interested. He wanted to know about the offset design versus a drum smoker, about wood selection, about temperature management. I told him what I know. He told me what he knew, which turned out to be substantial — he grew up in Nigeria watching his father smoke goat over hardwood and the technique was not so different from what I was describing.

I thought about Mr. Clarence showing me the barrel smoker in the backyard when I was twenty years old, a Vietnamese kid from Alief with no idea what he was good at. And here I was thirty years later showing a Nigerian-American pitmaster how I'd adapted those same techniques. The world turns in interesting ways if you let it.

James asking real questions about the smoker reminded me that the best food moments aren’t about impressing anyone — they’re about showing up honestly, the way he did with that six-pack of sparkling water. The ribs and queso were already spoken for that Sunday, but later in the week I put together this bacon-wrapped pesto tenderloin as a weeknight follow-through on everything the smoker had me thinking about: pork, smoke, something worth paying attention to. It’s not a complicated recipe, and that’s exactly why it works.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 pork tenderloin (about 1 to 1 1/4 lbs), silver skin trimmed
3 tablespoons basil pesto (store-bought or homemade)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
6 to 8 strips thin-cut bacon
1 tablespoon olive oil
Kosher salt, to taste
Fresh basil or parsley, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven. Preheat your oven to 425°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with a wire rack and set aside.
Season the tenderloin. Pat the pork tenderloin dry with paper towels. Season lightly with salt, garlic powder, smoked paprika, and black pepper on all sides.
Apply the pesto. Spread the basil pesto evenly over the entire surface of the tenderloin, coating it well.
Wrap with bacon. Lay the bacon strips out on a flat surface, slightly overlapping. Place the pesto-coated tenderloin at one end and roll it up so the bacon wraps around the entire loin. Tuck the ends under or secure with toothpicks if needed.
Sear the outside. Heat olive oil in an oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. Place the bacon-wrapped tenderloin seam-side down and sear for 2 to 3 minutes per side until the bacon begins to crisp and brown.
Roast to finish. Transfer the skillet (or move the tenderloin to the prepared wire rack on the baking sheet) to the preheated oven. Roast for 18 to 22 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part reads 145°F.
Rest before slicing. Remove from the oven and tent loosely with foil. Let rest for 5 minutes before slicing into 1-inch medallions. Garnish with fresh basil or parsley if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Bacon-Wrapped Pesto Pork Tenderloin — The Pork Is Always the Point