Pulled pork in less than 3 hours.

I know everyone will read the subject like and go "yeah right". Any pulled pork in 3 hours wont' be as good as that pulled pork I meticulously watched over for 13 hours on my smoker. Hear me out. I've slaved over many a pork shoulder, brisket, and ribs on a horizontal smoker or vertical smoker. When everyone at the tailgate wants BBQ I'm the guy who gets stuck with the job of setting aside half a day to tend my fire and my meat. I ain't going to lie sometimes watching over a fire for 10+ hours can get tedious.

One noon kickoff last year I fell asleep early and totally forgot to put the butt on the smoker. Woke up at 6am with cold meat still in the fridge. Here is what I did.

I put some deep score lines with my knife in the butt almost quartering it to help with the cook time. Rubbed the butt down like normal then 2 hours on low pressure in the Instapot with just a smidge of water at the bottom to help build the pressure. I actually cooked it for 1 hour, checked it, added 30 more minutes, checked again, and added 30 more until the pork was falling apart. 2 hours seems to work for a 6-8lbs butt. Like any pulled pork made in a crock pot you either have to make it swimming in BBQ sauce (gross, I hate pulled pork like that cooked in BBQ sauce) or there just isn't any flavor to it. I like the flavor in my pulled pork from the bark and the rub. You don't need a sauce the eat my pork as it stands up with flavor on it's own. Sauce is only to compliment the rub. Anyways... back to the pork...

I then coated the pork with more rub and stuck it on a hot charcoal grill with a few chunks of pecan for smoke.



The hot grill chars the fat, caramelizes the sugar in the rub, and gives it a little bark (texture) and color. Because the meat is spread out on the grill in just a couple of minutes it develops a really nice smoke flavor. You also have more rub being caramelized over a greater surface area of meat. There is tons of flavor. The bark is perfect as you grill it just enough to give it a char. Your bark has a hint of texture without having the shoe leather texture. Since you are smoking the meat over a hot grill the smoke is from a nice hot clean burn so your you get that sweet smokey flavor from that thin blue smoke instead of bitter creosote from a poorly developed fire with billowly cold white smoke.



I've done 5-6 butts this way over the last year and no one is on to my gig. In fact I've had many people say the pork done this way is the best I've done. Don't have an instapot but have more time? Same method works in the crock pot you just need 6-8 hours instead. But, still way easier. The results will speak for themselves. Do it this way a couple of times and you won't go back. I know I haven't.