How to Stuff Pork Loin

Stuffing a pork loin not only adds flavor—it significantly ups the WOW factor!

Want to serve something really tasty AND impressive? Look no further than this Spiral-Stuffed Pork Loin. It’s perfect for Christmas, Easter, Sunday night dinner, or whenever you want your guests to say “wow!”

Video: How To Spiral Stuff A Pork Loin

Ways To Stuff A Pork Loin

There are a few different ways you can stuff a pork loin. The simplest way is to cut the cylinder of meat lengthwise so it opens up like a book, add the stuffing, and close it up again. Sometimes this is called butterflying and it makes for slices of meat that look like this.

Another way to do it is to make a hole down the middle of the loin, creating a sort of tube and filling the tube with stuffing. It makes for slices that have a donut-shaped piece of meat with the stuffing in the center.

My favorite, though, is a spiral-cut—because its slices are the most impressive, beautiful spirals of meat and filling. Confusingly, this is also sometimes called butterflying, even though it’s completely different than the first option. It’s also sometimes called a roll cut because the final roast looks like a jelly roll. Either way, it’s not that hard to do and even if you don’t do it perfectly, once the meat is rolled back up, cooked, and sliced, most of the “mistakes” will magically disappear!

Here’s a YouTube video showing how to do the first kind of butterflying I mentioned, followed by the roll-cut method that I use below.

Here’s how you do it.

How To Make Stuffed Pork Loin:

Start with the loin on a large cutting board. (Don’t know the difference between a pork loin and a pork tenderloin? Jump over to this post here.) Put the meat perpendicular to you and make a cut along one side of the cylinder about 1/2-inch from the edge, stopping short of the cutting board by about 1/2 inch. You’ll end up with a 1/2-inch flap of meat, running the length of the cylinder, on the same side as your cutting hand (your right if you’re right-handed).

Change your knife so it’s parallel to the cutting board. Starting where the flap meets the cylinder, cut into the meat (away from the flap), keeping your knife 1/2 inch above the cutting board.

Continue this cut, pulling the meat away from the knife with your other hand, like you’re unrolling a carpet. Eventually, you’ll have one large rectangle of meat that’s about 1/2-inch thick. Ta-da!

If there are places that the meat feels too thick, make a shallow slit in those spots and press the meat open (you can see where I made a slit like this towards the right in the photo above).

If the surface of the meat looks a little ragged or there are holes, don’t worry too much. Most of those imperfections will be unnoticeable once the roast reaches the dinner table.

Add your stuffing to the top of this rectangle, using my recipe below or your own. About a 1/4-inch thickness is ideal.

Starting at what was the inside of the meat, reroll it into a cylinder, then tie it with kitchen twine.

You’re ready to roast.

And like I said, once your spiral cut roast gets to the table, the slices not only look impressive, but they’re tasty, too. Because the stuffing adds flavor to the roast through and through!

I’m going to say here though, that if all of that seems like too much work, or if you were planning to stuff it and your day got away from you and you have less time, you can always just roast the pork loin as is, without stuffing. This is my best method for cooking a pork loin roast in the oven, and I think you’re going to love that nearly as much. Either way, Enjoy!