How to Cook a Juicy Herb Crusted Pork Sirloin Roast with a Brine

Discover how you can cook a Pork Sirloin roast, a lean piece of pork so that it's always juicy and never dry and most importantly packed full of flavor.

📋 What's New In This Post (1/25/25) - Updated the cost to buy this roast in 2025 and shared that thermometer I am now using when it's cooking in the oven.

✍🏻 Featured Comment - Margie says "Absolutely amazing. Could not believe how juicy this pork was. This was only the second time I used a brine, the first being on some chicken breast, and I can't believe the flavor deep inside the meat. I missed the part about heating the brine first, so I merely stirred the salt, sugar, and peppercorns into my liquid. I also had no vegetable stock, but I did have some home canned turkey stock. This will be on my list of repeats!"

A Budget Roast Made Juicy

When you have a family of 6, you are always searching out for a deal at the grocery store, especially on meat. Pork is often a super cheap option to go with. A pork roast is often more than half the price of a beef roast. Season it with any herb crust like you would a rib roast and you can still have a tasty hunk of meat to bring to the table that didn't cost you a ton.

Plus, I have one daughter who doesn't like beef in any way but will eat pork.

The last time I got myself a Pork Sirloin Roast it was $2.18 per pound at a Winco store in Oregon. Hard to beat that price in 2025! In fact pork prices have been holding pretty steady since I first published this blog post in the first year of my blog in 2009.

Here are the tricks I use to keep this roast juicy.

Brining - Giving the roast a couple hour soak in a brine of salt, brown sugar, and vegetable broth will both help keep the pork moist when cooked and also flavor the meat right to the center via the power of osmosis.

Low and Slow - I cook the roast at a low temperature so that the outside doesn't cook way faster than the inside, that way you end up with a more evenly cooked piece of meat.

Tracking the Temperature - While the roast is cooking, I track the temperature of the center of the roast at all times, so I can pull it from the oven at the perfect moment before it's overcooked.

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Ingredients

Here is what you will be needing to make this roast:

For the brine

• 2 cups vegetable broth
• ¼ cup kosher salt
• ½ cup light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns

For the roast

• appox. 3 lb pork sirloin roast
• your choice of a combination of fresh or dried thyme, rosemary, and/or tarragon
• cooking oil

Did You Know? The sirloin roast comes from the loin area of the pig. The loin is divided into 3 sections, the blade, the center, and the sirloin. The sirloin is the area close to the back of the pig. It has less fat than the blade, but it not as tender as the center. I always find it as a boneless roast.

How to Make the Brine

The very first step in this process is preparing your brine. It's simple to make with you just needing to dissolve salt and brown sugar in vegetable broth. Once it's done you have two options:

• Make it ahead of time so that it can be placed in the fridge so it's cooled down completely before adding the pork. I like to do this the night before I am going to cook the pork.
• Or adding ice to the brine until it's cold enough to add the pork. This is what you will need to do if you don't have time to let the brine chill in the fridge. But you need to do it ahead of time or have some ice ready.

You shouldn't skip heating up the brine to start because it's much harder to completely dissolve salt and sugar in cold liquids.

What I Use To Know When It's Done Cooking

While the brine will help keep this lean roast juicy, it's also equally important to cook it to the right internal temperature. For that I use a thermometer with a probe to track the cooking the entire time it's in the oven.

Make sure to insert the probe into the thickest part of the roast. I cook the roast at 250 degrees until it hits 125 degrees. Then I turn the oven up to 450 degrees to brown and finish the roast. I pull it at 145 degrees. It will go up 3-5 degrees after that, which means you could have pulled it earlier, but I find that my family likes pork best around 150 degrees.

According to the USDA, pork needs to be cooked until it hits 145 degrees. Even if the pork has some pink color to it, it's safe to eat if it's at or over that 145 degree mark.

If you are interested in picking up of these extremely helpful thermometer check out the DOT® Simple Alarm Thermometer on the ThermoWorks website. They don't sell on Amazon, so you need to buy one directly from them. Many years ago I saw Alton Brown using their products on his show Good Eats. I eventually got to meet people from ThermoWorks at a food blogging conference, host them on my podcast, and visit their headquarters in Utah. Every single one of their products as wowed me. I use the The Thermapen® ONE every single day!

More Cheap Roasts

I really enjoy taking cheap roast and finding ways to serve them up juicy. Two beef roasts that I love to do that with are

• Bottom Round Roast
• Eye of Round Roast

I also like to save money on my pork by buying a whole boneless pork loin and cut it myself into roasts, chops, or cubed pieces for soups. In that post I just linked to I can take you through all the steps so you can cut your own pork sirloin roast.

Herb Crusted & Brined Pork Sirloin Roast

Learn how to turn a cheap pork roast like a sirloin and turn it into a juicy, tender, herb-crusted roast.

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Course: Main Course

Servings: 0

Author: Eric Samuelson

Ingredients

For the brine

• 2 cups vegetable broth
• ¼ cup kosher salt
• ½ cup light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns

For the herb crust

• 3 lb boneless pork sirloin roast
• 2-3 tbsp your choice of fresh or dried rosemary, thyme, or tarragon chopped
• cooking oil for coasting the roast

Instructions

To make the brine

• Combine all the brine ingredients into a saucepan over high heat.
• Cook until the salt and sugar are dissolved.
• Then remove from the heat and add about 1 pound of ice to cool the brine down. Give it a good stir and set it aside. If you make it the night before you can just chill it in the fridge and skip the ice.
• Now take your pork sirloin roast and place it in a gallon sized plastic bag and dump the brine into the bag. Seal the bag well, place it in a container just in case the bag leaks, and place it into the refrigerator for 2 hours, 3 hours max.

How to cook the roast

• Preheat your oven to 250 degrees
• Once the pork has finished it's soak, take it out of the bag, lightly rinse off the roast, and pat with a power towel to dry.
• Rub down the roast with a bit of cooking oil, just enough to make it a little shiny.
• Then add your chopped herbs to all sides of the roast.
• Place the roast on a roasting pan with the side with the most fat up (and this is a leaner cut so there won't be too much fat).
• Then insert a probe therometer on an angle through the center of the meat (this is really the only way to know for sure when your roast is done). Place into the oven.
• When the roast hits 125 degrees pull it from the oven..
• Then turn the oven up to 450 degrees (this will give it a nice flavorful crust).
• When the oven is ready, return the roast to the oven When it hits 145 pull the roast from the oven.
• Let it rest for about 10 mins. Slice and enjoy!

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