Broke OCLP Mac by installing Linux Mint to USB – need minimal OpenCore setup to be able to boot off the usb drive and install oclp on disk

Hi all,

I have an OCLP Mac that I broke while trying to install Linux Mint to an external USB drive. That installer seems to have messed up my EFI/boot partition, and now macOS won’t boot at all.

From Windows, I’m following the OpenCore Install Guide:

• Used macrecovery.py to download macOS and make a USB installer.
• Put OpenCore 1.0.6 on the USB, added HfsPlus.efi and OpenRuntime.efi to EFI/OC/Drivers, and added the basic kexts (Lilu.kext, VirtualSMC.kext, WhateverGreen.kext) into EFI/OC/Kexts.​
• I’m now setting up config.plist for my Mac’s CPU so the USB OpenCore will boot and hopefully see my internal macOS install/recovery.​

I still have my old OCLP EFI/data backed up.

What I need help with:

• What is the bare minimum OpenCore/OCLP setup I need on this USB just to reach macOS recovery or the installer on a real Mac?
• Which parts of my old OCLP EFI (config, kexts, ACPI) can I safely reuse, and what should be rebuilt?
• Any common gotchas that would stop OpenCore on the USB from detecting my internal macOS disk?

Hardware: MacBook Pro 13 inch 2014 on macOS 15.7.2

Thanks in advance.