Taiwanese Meat Sauce (Lu Rou) in the Instant Pot

My husband is obsessed with Kenji Alt Lopez and Serious Eats.  He mostly only cooks on weekends when we host our extended family at our house, but that means a lot of serious cooking on Sundays and normally for 12+ people.

For New Year's Eve, we did a noodle potluck and while I was imagining an easy rice noodle stir fry, he was already browsing the Serious Eats website for something good.  He came across this recipe for Danzai noodles, but it also required two cups of lu rou or Taiwanese meat sauce.

We had most of the stuff, so we went about our normal Sunday routine, and go ready to get the veggies and spices all ready by 3 PM... and that's when we realized, our Taiwanese meat sauce recipe calls for 3-4 hours of cooking!

Shoot!  What were we to do?

I had this brilliant idea to use our Instant Pot, my favorite new kitchen gadget, but without any internet help, we knew it was going to be a bit of a gamble.  Turns out it was a worthwhile investment, but we probably don't need to double our recipe again (meat sauce for daysssss guys).  Hubs said we need to jot down the recipe asap so we don't forget.  What a lifesaver the Instant Pot was today!

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups sliced shallots (6 medium)
2 pounds of ground pork
2 medium cloves of garlic, minced (2 teaspoons)
1 teaspoon five spice powder
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 cup dark soy sauce
1/2 cup light soy sauce
1 cup Chinese rice cooking wine

INSTRUCTIONS:
Turn Instant Pot to saute mode.  Line a plate with triple layer of paper towels.

Heat oil to 325 F over medium high heat and add shallots, stir and cook until pale golden for 1-2 minutes.  Transfer to plate with triple layer of towels.  Reserve 1 tablespoon oil for Instant Pot. When shallots are cool, lightly crush and set aside.

Use reserved tablespoon of shallot oil to cook ground pork in the Instant Pot until cooked through and beginning to brown.  Add the 2 teaspoons of minced garlic and crushed shallots, cook until fragrant, about 1 minute more.  Add 1 teaspoon of five spice powder, 2 teaspoons of sugar, and stir.  Add 1/2 cup dark and 1/2 cup of light soy sauce, 1 cup of Chinese rice cooking wine, and mix it all up.

Manually cook for 13 minutes and natural release for 10 minutes.  Then release all the way, and meat is ready!!

BOOM!