Those who know me, know that I’m a sucker for a few things:

A “new” trendy diet
I mean, most of them aren’t new by any stretch… so maybe let’s call them repackaged diets. But as long as it’s trendy and getting press, I’m gonna juice whatever refuse I can find on my back patio for the sake of checking some dumb box. I mean, whether it’s eating only orange foods (Ranch is okay as long as it’s stuck to a carrot, right?), shunning meat (just kidding – I’d never), “eating” things only if they can be sucked through a straw, or eating only things that were available before the creation of spoken language… I’ll give anything a try once. Just for the heck of it.

Scarves
I live in Katy, Texas, where the “need” for scarves is maybe 10 out of 365 days in a “cold” year. I have more than 10 scarves.

Modern technology (aka BUY ALL OF THE GADGETS!!)
And that’s where these sandwiches come in. My friend Brandi bought an Instant Pot – it’s an electric pressure cooker that does a bunch of other things, too. The very next day, I showed up on her doorstep with a 4lb pork roast, a Dr Pepper, a bottle of Gatlin’s barbecue sauce, and a package of Hawaiian rolls.

We seared the roast right in the pot (a dream of mine!), set it to Pressure for 90 minutes, and by the time we had made a dent in the cheese plate and a couple of bottles of wine, it was dinner time. Dinner that tasted like it had cooked for 8-10 hours. I was sold. Sooooo sold. Like, ordered-one-for-myself-sitting-right-there-on-her-couch-eating-a-pulled-pork-slider, sold.

And now that my shiny new pressure cooker is here, I decided to give it an inaugural spin on one of my (and your) all-time favorite slow cooker recipes: French Dip Sandwiches.

In the slow cooker, we’re talking 6 hours minimum. In the Instant Pot? 10 minutes of prep, 40 minutes of cooking at pressure, 15-20 minutes of resting, and another 10-15 minutes to shred the meat and build sandwiches.