Instant Pot Apple Pork Tenderloin Recipe

This is one of my favorite Instant Pot recipes and it’s perfect for fall (or any season, really). We I recently had some friends over for dinner and we served this along with roasted vegetables, green beans, and butternut squash soup. The meal was a hit! I’m complying with requests for this recipe by posting it here :).

Our dinner – pork tenderloin with apple gravy, green beans, roasted vegetables, and butternut squash apple soup

I served this gravy with the pork, which is made by pureeing the ingredients in the Instant Pot after taking the meat out and removing the bay leaf & rosemary stem, and then adding the roux. The glass “gravy boat” is actually a teapot that I bought from Teavana when they were liquidating. The inner glass steeper and lid are removed 🙂

Ingredients:

• 3 lb pork tenderloin (the weight is approximate, I use 2 long pieces of pork, which is half of the pork tenderloin pack from Costco)
• 1 tsp oil of your choice (I use duck fat) for the pork
• 1 large onion, yellow or white
• 1 tsp oil of your choice (I use duck fat) for the onion
• 1 cup chicken broth (I use 1 cup of water with 1 tsp of Better Than Bullion)
• 1 cup apple juice
• 2 large apples or 3 small apples (Use a good cooking apple that is also quite sweet like fuji. Honeycrips apples are too sour for this recipe.)
• 1 sprig of fresh rosemary (about 5 inches)
• 5 large fresh sage leaves (or 10 small leaves)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 3 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp flour
• More salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Slice the onion (thicker slices are better) and the apples.
2. Heat 1 tsp of oil in a skillet over medium-high heat and add the onions. Cook the onions a bit, stirring occasionally so that some of them caramelize without overcooking the onions (about 10 minutes).
3. Meanwhile, put 1 tsp of oil into the instant pot and turn it to saute mode. When the oil is hot, put the two pork tenderloins in and sear the top and bottom until they are brown (a few minutes each side, flip using tongs).
4. Add the browned onions to the instant pot, as well as the chicken broth, apple juice, salt, pepper, apples, rosemary, sage, and bay leaf. Poke the herbs and some of the apples down so that they are sitting in the liquid.
5. Close the instant pot, set the knob to sealing, and select manual pressure. Set the time to 25 minutes. It will take time to come to pressure before the 25 minutes start, so plan to do something else during this time.
6. When the 25 minutes of cooking are over, manually release the pressure by turning the knob to venting.
7. Use tongs to remove the pork tenderloin from the Instant Pot and onto a plate. Slice the pork.
8. Remove the bay leaf and the stem of the rosemary (the rosemary leaves should have mostly fallen off, but if not, pick the leaves off and put them back into the Instant Pot).
9. Use an immersion blender to blend everything in the Instant Pot until smooth.
10. Make the roux by melting the butter in a saucepan over medium heat and then stirring in the flour. Keep cooking and stirring it until it becomes a light to medium brown color.
11. Pour the roux into the Instant Pot and turn it to saute mode. Stir the mixture until you see bubbles. Stir for another minute. Your gravy is done!
12. Turn off the Instant Pot and taste the gravy. Add more salt and pepper as needed. Stir and ladle the gravy into a serving container. Serve the gravy with the pork.