Are you a busy person? No time to babysit a smoker for 8 hours? Are you LAZY? Well, I have great news, SLACKER! This pulled pork only takes around 3 hours!
Why does pulled pork have to take SOOOO longggg?!?!
Pulled pork is typically made by using a Boston Butt roast, which comes from the hog’s shoulder and nowhere even remotely close to it’s butt. The shoulder is made up of several different muscles of varying shapes and sizes. This means that there is lots of fat and connective tissue in between all of these muscles….and it takes time to properly break down all of those tissues to create a tender cut of cooked meat.
It’s also a pretty large cut of meat. We’re talkin several pounds of flesh, roughly 6-8″ thick. That’s a lot of girth to penetrate with the heat of your cooking apparatus. Generally, the thicker the cut of meat, the longer it takes to reach the proper internal temperature. I know, CRAZY, right?!?!
How can I increase my laziness, while also increasing my flavor?
Great question! I am so glad you asked! We are going to incorporate a couple different time-saving and flavor-increasing methods.
- Make the meat smaller: This is going to perform a couple different functions here. First, and most obvious, it decreases the amount of time required to raise the internal temperature of the meat. Less thickness, less cook time. The second function is going to be increasing the overall flavor. Since there are now multiple pieces of smaller meat, you also have more surface area for spice rubs and smoke to adhere to.
- Finish in a pressure cooker: Meat really only absorbs smoke until it hits an internal temp of 100 degrees, which is usually within the first 2 hours. After that point, the smoker is just acting like more of an oven to complete the cooking. A lot of times, I will smoke the meat for about 2 hours and then finish it inside in the oven. This frees me up from having to stoke a fire every 30 minutes. This method still takes several hours, but requires less attention. For this exercise, we are going to go one step further…..we are going to finish in the pressure cooker. I am using a Crock Pot brand pressure cooker. I ended up running it on the meat/stew setting for about 40 minutes. So, in total, my prep and cook time took me about 3 hours. This is a HUGE time savings…..and really not much sacrifice in flavor or texture. It comes out just great!
But this isn’t “rEaL bARbeCue”!!!
I know barbecue purists are seething and punching the air right now. I am not suggesting that you are going to win some KCBS national tournaments with this method. But, if you want some great meat at home and don’t have a ton of time, this is a tremendous alternative!
The way that I envision this being used, is for weekly meal prep. You can cook a Boston Butt or two, shred it up, store it in the fridge, and have exquisitely prepared protein to use in many different applications. So, all of you purists out there, CALM DOWN….this post is not meant to try and delegitimize your 16 hour, 37 spices, 3 or 4 injections of soy sauce and MSG, up-all-night cooks. There will always be a place for you. LOL Some people are just busy or they simply don’t care about the rules of barbecue tradition. This is for them.
What equipment will I need to make this simple and quick pulled pork?
First of all, you need a way to smoke your meat. There are a few ways to accomplish this and, in the future, I will cover them all and add the links to this post. But, for today, I will be covering one of them. The next piece of equipment is an automated pressure cooker of some sort.
- Smoker: For this particular recipe, I used the Austin XL, by Pitboss. I picked up this pellet smoker from WalMart to use for meal prepping. But, I have used it for so much more than that. I really love this thing! It makes some delicious meals, without demanding much of my time or attention, like my traditional smoker does. While I still love the flavor of a real wood fire of the traditional smoker, these Pitboss pellet smokers are a great alternative for people with tight schedules or not enough yard space to store a pile of firewood. If you don’t already have one, check out Pitboss HERE.
- Pressure Cooker: We have a couple different pressure cookers. The one that I used for this was our Crockpot 8 Quart Pressure Cooker. This thing will do the job. The other model that we have is the Ninja Foodi. This is also a fairly good choice. I tend to prefer the air fryer function of the Ninja over the Crockpot. But, either choice is fine.
How to seaz’n your pulled pork.
For this particular recipe, I used a simple mix of coarse ground black pepper and kosher salt in a 2:1 ratio (2 parts black pepper and 1 part kosher salt). I had intentions of using this meat in different recipes that may not work well with a “traditional” barbecue dry rub. But, if you just want barbecue, feel free to use any preferred dry rubs of your choice. If you need a recipe for a DIY rub, check out our Pulled Pork Dry Rub Recipe.
Quick and Easy Pulled Pork for Lazy Cheaters
Equipment
- Some sort of barbecue smoker
- Electronic Pressure Cooker
Ingredients
- 1 Each 8-10 pound Boston Butt (Pork Shoulder Roast) Bone-in or boneless
- 1 Each Spice rub of your choice I used 2:1 mix of Coarse Ground Black Pepper and Kosher Salt.
- 1 Each Some sort of "spritzing" liquid Apple juice or 1:1 mix of water and apple cider vinegar are great choices. Beer can also be used. Even pickle juice would probably be good!
Instructions
- Heat your smoker to 250 degrees.
- Cut your pork roast into roughly 3-4 inch cubes and season well with your preferred spice rub. For this recipe, I used a simple mix of coarse ground black pepper and kosher salt in a 2:1 mix, since I wanted to repurpose the leftover meat into some different recipes.
- Place meat in smoker and allow to cook for about 2 hours. Feel free to spritz the meat every 30 minutes with apple juice or an apple cider vinegar/water mixture to keep the surface of the meat moist.
- Remove meat from smoker and place it inside of your pressure cooker.
- Add enough water to your pressure cooker to allow for proper pressurizing. Mine needed at least 1 cup of liquid to create enough pressure for this machine.
- Bring the pressure cooker up to full pressure and cook for approximately 45 minutes.
- Release pressure and allow meat to cool long enough to allow for handling the meat with your bare hands. Probably 30 minutes or longer. Meat will reabsorb some of the moisture as it cools and "relaxes". So, let that meat rest!
- Once cool enough to handle without melting your fingers, shred the meat by hand or with two forks.
- Enjoy!
I’m going to try this for meal prep. Thanks for the lesson.
Heck yeah man!