Succulent Grilled Pork Tenderloin

October. The month I dread and need and cannot avoid. October is when Memphis turns beautiful — the trees going gold and red, the air carrying that crispness that makes you want to be outside, the light falling at angles that make even the roughest parts of Orange Mound look like a painting. And October is when Denise's birthday arrives, the fifteenth, and the beauty of the month is tangled with the grief of it, and I cannot separate them, and I have stopped trying.

The first week of October I cook. Not the usual weekend smoke — something more deliberate, more intentional, a week of cooking that builds toward the fifteenth the way a song builds toward its chorus. This week I made black-eyed peas. Not for any particular reason except that black-eyed peas were Mama's Tuesday dinner, the staple of the shotgun house kitchen, the dish that could feed seven people for pennies and taste like it cost a fortune.

Mama's black-eyed peas: dried peas, soaked overnight, then simmered for two hours with a ham hock — yes, a ham hock, because some traditions are non-negotiable even if Rosetta has banned ham hocks in the main rotation, and I consider this an emergency hock situation. Add an onion, halved. Two cloves of garlic, smashed. A bay leaf. Salt at the end, never the beginning, because salt toughens beans if added too early, and tough beans are a character flaw of the cook. Let them simmer until the peas are creamy and the broth is thick and the ham hock has given everything it had, and then you eat them over rice with cornbread on the side and hot sauce available but not required.

Rosetta knew what I was doing — cooking through the week, filling the house with familiar smells, building a wall of food against the grief that's coming. She knows because she's been married to me for thirty-two years and she's watched me do this every October since Denise died. She doesn't comment. She just eats what I cook and sits with me afterward and lets the silence do the work that words can't.

Thursday I drove to the cemetery. Denise is buried at New Park Cemetery on Horne Lake Road, in a plot that Rosetta and I bought in the worst week of our lives, a week when decisions had to be made and none of them felt possible. The headstone says: DENISE RENEE JOHNSON, BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER, OCTOBER 15, 1987 — MARCH 7, 2010, and underneath, the scripture she loved: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

I sat on the grass next to her and I talked. I told her about DeAndre's first grade and Aaliyah's pre-K and Trey trying to eat everything in sight. I told her about Marcus and Angela and how he's thinking about marriage. I told her about the fundraiser — $8,200, our best year. I told her about the knee and the retirement letters and the slow, scary slide toward a life without a mail route. I told her I missed her in the specific, concrete way that grief demands — not the abstract missing of time passing, but the real missing, the physical absence of her laugh and her stubbornness and her knife-and-fork ribs and her calling me Big Daddy.

Then I drove home and made cornbread and sat on the porch and watched the October sun set over Orange Mound, and the sky was the color of Denise's favorite lipstick — a warm, reckless red — and I let that be a sign because I needed it to be.

The black-eyed peas were Mama’s dish, and I cooked them for her memory and for Denise’s birthday coming and for the weight of October that sits on my chest every year without asking permission. But by Friday the peas were gone and the grief was still there, and I wanted something from the fire—something that required attention, that made me stand outside in that gold October light and tend to it the way you tend to the people you love while you still have them. This grilled pork tenderloin is what I reached for: simple, honest, the kind of pork that doesn’t apologize for being exactly what it is, which is about all any of us can manage in a week like that one.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes (plus 1 hour marinating) | Servings: 4–6

Ingredients

2 pork tenderloins (about 1 lb each), silver skin trimmed
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

Make the marinade. In a small bowl, whisk together olive oil, garlic, soy sauce, Dijon mustard, brown sugar, smoked paprika, thyme, black pepper, salt, and cayenne (if using) until fully combined.
Marinate the pork. Place the trimmed tenderloins in a zip-top bag or shallow dish. Pour the marinade over the pork, turning to coat on all sides. Seal and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to 8 hours for deeper flavor.
Preheat the grill. Heat a gas or charcoal grill to medium-high heat (about 400°F). Oil the grates well to prevent sticking.
Grill the tenderloins. Remove pork from the marinade and let any excess drip off. Place on the grill and cook for 15–20 minutes, turning every 4–5 minutes to sear on all sides, until an internal thermometer reads 145°F at the thickest part.
Rest before slicing. Transfer the tenderloins to a cutting board and tent loosely with foil. Let rest for 5–10 minutes—this keeps the juices inside where they belong.
Slice and serve. Cut into 3/4-inch medallions, arrange on a platter, and garnish with fresh parsley. Serve alongside rice, black-eyed peas, or skillet cornbread.

Nutrition (per serving)

Succulent Grilled Pork Tenderloin — The Hock That Started It All