Pork in Red Onion Sauce

I was looking through Marge Poore’s 1,000 Mexican Recipes and found this interesting dish, Pork in Red Onion Sauce, Cerdo con Salsa de Cebollas Rojas in Spanish. I like red onions and onions in general. Onions are typically used in almost every Mexican, Latin, and Spanish dish I know. They are found in most Filipino dishes as well. In my family they are part of our core seasonings with garlic and paprika. Either, diced, sliced, sectioned, or in powdered form, they appear in 90% of what I cook. This was even more interesting since it was red onions as the star of the sauce.

As I said I am a big fan of onions and most of the Allium family. That includes, scallions (green onions), shallots, leeks, garlic, and chives. When I came back to cooking I was using sweet onions exclusively. I learned that unless one is making something raw, sweet onions do not work. One loses the onion flavor in the mix. That meant I started using red onions, white onions, and yellow onions. In salads, sandwiches, pico de gallo, or any uncooked format sweet onions work best.

Cerdo con Salsa de Cebollas Rojas

The dish comes in two parts the seasoned pork and the sauce. The pork is seasoned with ground Mexican oregano, salt, black pepper, and garlic. It is then roasted. The sauce is sautéed red onions, rice wine vinegar, orange juice, red jalapeño (spicy red pepper) jelly, salt, and black pepper. I made this on February 10, 2017. I felt that Mexican Red Rice was not a good fit. I paired it with Cuban yellow rice. Red rice has too strong of a flavor to go well with this dish.

This dish is sweet, sour, and spicy. This came out wonderful. The mildness of the Cuban yellow rice did not conflict with the flavors of the red onion sauce. I may pair it with a Mexican style roasted potatoes next time. I brought it to work for some co-workers to try. It was a hit there too. So far Ms. Poore’s book has not handed me a dud.