Instant Pot Pulled Pork Sandwiches (with a Secret Texas Ingredient!)

There aren’t many things that are more Texan than Dr. Pepper. At Sonic, you HAVE to try a Dr. Pepper with chocolate– I know it sounds weird, but it’s like drinking a chocolate covered cherry! Poured over ice with a little (or a lot) of Rebecca Creek whiskey (also Texan), it makes for quite the sipping beverage around a fire pit. Added to an Instant Pot with some pork, Dr. Pepper makes for killer pulled pork. Instant Pot Pulled Pork sandwiches, I admit, are not the same as the smoked version (particularly if you’re from Texas), but it’s yummy anyway, especially on a busy mama night when you don’t have 8-12 hours to smoke a pork loin.

One of the keys to making this recipe the best it can be is to NOT stir the BBQ sauce into the pot. With an Instant Pot, you need liquid to bring the pot to pressure, but while it’s heating up, you have to make sure there’s nothing thick that’s going to scald to the bottom (like the BBQ sauce) because that will prevent it from coming to pressure. So, the way you prevent that is by pouring the Dr. Pepper in over the pork and onions (allowing it to get to the bottom) and then pouring the BBQ sauce over the meat without messing with anything in the pot so that it stays up above the bottom of your Instant Pot.

There are 101 ways to serve Instant Pot pulled pork, but my favorite is on a hamburger bun with extra sauce and a slice of sweet onion. The sauce of choice at our house is moppin sauce, a mustard-based, slightly spicy sauce that soaks into the bun and makes a deliciously messy sandwich. It’s also amazing with Instant Pot black-eyed peas for another traditional Southern dish to accompany your Instant Pot pulled pork. Instant Pot Pulled Pork Sandwiches have definitely become a favorite for a quick weeknight meal or something easy to bring to a friend’s house for a BBQ (even if it wasn’t TECHNICALLY BBQed… shhh!)