Y’all don’t hate me, but you can make totally passable pork butt in a pressure cooker in about an hour. No, it would never stand up to smoked meat, but, an hour.
I've cooked probably 10 pork butts that way. Like you say, it's pretty good for being so quick. The pork shreds well and is pretty tender – you mainly just miss out on the smoky flavor and bark.
I recently got an old Traeger smoker, and I've done one pork butt, and two picnic roasts on it so far. They're definitely in a different league, but it does take much longer.
I wouldn't really compare pressure cooker pork butt to the smoker version, but it's great compared to the other common non-smoker variant, the crock pot(or slow cooker to be brand generic). For most meats, I don't want to go back to a slow cooker(except for certain sauces/marinades). The pressure cooker version is still tender, but retains more of a meat texture, rather than turning to mush as often happens with a slow cooker.
No hate, just different. I cook my butts in a nat gas powered grill I have. Low heat on one side, butt on the other, with bread pans full of soaked wood chips directly on the burner. BBQ purists would hate me, but it taste great, works with what I have and is relatively easy to do.
I was inspired to figure out a good way to smoke/cook BBQ on equipment I had from an Alton Brown Good Eats episode.
Pressure cookers are magic, everyone who likes to cook should have one. Especially for stuff that normally takes an obscene amount of time to do properly like beef stock.
In fairness, there's no reason not to take an obscene amount of time when cooking stock. Leave it on the counter slow cooking for 24 hours. You're just going to put it in the freezer with the dozen other jars of stock you already have.
What I like about the pressure cooker is that I make stock as and when I need it. Do I need stock for dinner tonight? Just put on as much as I need of exactly the stock I want an hour or two before, and done.
I’ve done similar with sous vide the difference being of course much lower temps and that it’s over days but it’s basically hands off for the whole cooking time and you can get a fairly decent crust by smoking it for a couple hours before shredding it as smoke only penetrates the surface a little anyway.
Yep, I live in pork BBQ country, totally reasonable way to get a meal on the table. Always prefer smoke, but I'm not gonna turn down a ready made BBQ sandwich, they real kicker is making sure it is a good sauce and there's good slaw for it!
I remember when the instant pot got big and I got one. I gotta say that Pressure Cooking is such a good and underrated technique. Truly easy to make good quality food pretty quickly. Was so nice to have one for part of my time at University...
I wonder if you can pressure cook it for some fractional period, and then finish it in a smoker for another fractional period that ends up being 1/2 or less the total time of smoking alone, but would stand up to smoked meat.
When I was a wee goat, I took immense pleasure in an oven we had that combined microwaving and convection baking. The directions on a frozen deep dish apple pie was something like an hour. And microwave+convection was something like 30 minutes. And it was totally passable for a baked-only pie.
I've done the opposite in a crunch. Smoke it until the stall and finish in the pressure cooker. Wrapped in foil vs pressure cooker isn't that different. You're mostly just steaming it at that point.
Problem is, meat won't take on any smoke ring after a certain temperature (170 degrees)[1]. Thus you won't get that beautiful authentic smoked meat ring if you precook without smoke. To some, you may as well cook it in the microwave if it ain't got a smoke ring.
A friend started picking the brain if her Indian coworker’s wife on cooking, and as far as I’m aware the best “secret” she got out of her was that a number of traditional dishes can be approximated quite well in a pressure cooker. Nobody living in an apartment in North America has a tandoor, for instance. Or wants to spend all day cooking in a hot kitchen.
Not the same thing, but if I only have an hour, I'll cut the pork into chunks and make carnitas. I have to believe that it'll taste better than pressure cooked pork.
