The Ro-Man Pork Puller: A must for anyone who pulls pork
Chattin’ with Red
By Red Todd
redtodd@ocmcast.net
 Magnificent, great, awesome, splendid, outrageous, sturdy, etc. All of these words describe one thing for me — the Ro-Man Pork Puller. Invented by Rob Mandeville in North Platte, NE, this tool should be owned by everyone and anyone who pulls pork.
After doing some internet surfing one night, I came across a video on YouTube and saw that this fella was telling folks that he was able to pull an entire Boston butt in 00:06 seconds. I watched his video the whole way thru and I’ll be darned if he didn’t almost do just that. (It seemed to take closer to 10 seconds.)
Out of skepticism I watched it three more times. Needless to say, I was hooked on this idea and just had to review this product. I contacted Rob and at first he was a little hesitant to send me one because he was about to go to a tradeshow or something and only had so many. After some casual emails he decided to throw caution to the wind and ship one out to me within that same week.
When I received the box at my door I was astonished at the light weight it had while it was still packed. It was a simple cardboard box with a label on it. Nothing too impressive and when I opened it nothing else was impressive either; at first that is. I unpacked the pork puller from a little bit of Styrofoam and was now holding the most impressive barbeque accessory that had ever come into my possession.
The Ro-Man Pork Puller is a very well designed yet simplistic tool. It’s definitely one of those ideas that you instantly say “why didn’t I think of that.” It has a solid 5/16” shaft that is a little over 13” long. The shaft connects into a 5” diameter plate on one end and this plate has eight 1 ?” spikes protruding from it spaced symmetrically with four on the outside border and four toward the middle.
Just looking at this thing is enough to make you think of the damage it could cause to a piece of meat. I was real glad that I got it when I did because we had a couple of jobs coming up that was requiring us to smoke up a little over 500Lbs of pork the very next week. This was going to be a serious testing for this tool.
As the next week slowly went by I kept taking the pork puller out of the box and examining it. I was as anxious as I had ever been to work with any new accessory that I have ever tested. I went to my basement and got my corded drill. (I highly suggest that you use a drill with a cord on it because the way you have to work the trigger during use of the puller, you will definitely kill your battery if you are pulling any substantial amount of pork.)
I drove up to my partner’s place and the pork was well on its way to being done. While we waited we did a few other organizing things and finally a few of the butts were done. I suggested that we do four at a time right off the bat to see if the puller could handle that kind of load. Then we took a step back and said we better start with a single butt first. Tiny offered to time me on his cell phone with the stopwatch it has so I told him that I would do it as though I was doing it all by my self and nobody was around helping me.
I took one butt from the smoker, pulled the blade out of it, and tossed it into the big chili pot we have. I told Tiny to start the clock as soon as I pulled the trigger on the drill. In 12.36 seconds later I was done pulling that single butt. NO WAY! We were simply amazed and just couldn’t believe how easy it was and the great consistency I had achieved with it.
The next test was to let Tiny do the exact same thing. I hadn’t tried to hurry thru the butt I did and I told Tiny to do the same as though we were just processing the meat as we would for any job we do. I started the clock as soon as I heard the drill fire up and in 11.57 seconds he was done. Folks, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t just witnessed it or did it myself. The astonishment was written all over our faces because a couple of months ago we had done approximately the same amount of meat and it took me about six hours to pull it by myself.
We were like two kids who just got their best Christmas gift ever. Right then and there Tiny announced that he was buying another one so we could both have one. After we went inside to tell his wife about this awesome new gadget and get a sweet-tea we decided that it was time to put this gigantic little tool thru the mill and really test it.
I told Tiny that I wanted to test it as though I was doing the whole job by myself. I was going to remove the blades from four butts and toss the butts in the pot. At that point I was going to take a second or two to wipe my hands off so I wouldn’t get the drill all greasy. Then I was going to use the puller to pull the pork to the consistency that we like it and as soon as I think I’m there I would tell him to stop the clock.
To this day I’m still amazed and shocked that it only took 1 min. 28 sec. to achieve that goal. Tiny did the next four butts in the same manner and it took him 1 min. 36 sec. to attain the same goal. We’re talking pulled pork like we’d turn in for a contest. Not a pile of mush like some may think it would be.
Our next test was to do six butts in the same sequence as we did the four butts. This was accomplished easily however for us it was just a little too much and created the only real problem we could find throughout this whole testing period. In doing six butts we found that the consistency was just “okay”. This is very subjective though. We like to serve pork that really has a hand-pulled look to it and when we did six butts it started to get a little stringy for our tastes.
It certainly wasn’t like that commercial stuff you can get in the grocery store in a tub. It would have been passable for most caterers but for this testing process we decided it was best to stick with doing four butts at a time.
So in the end it took us a whopping 15 minutes to pull the first batch of 150Lbs of pork. Folks, I can’t stress it enough to you that so far this pork puller is my ultimate barbeque accessory for me. I can do without an electronic draft controller. I can do without a quick-read thermometer. And I can even do without my torch for lighting my fires. However, I can no longer do without this pork puller. It not only saved me hours of time pulling the pork, it also raised the yield of meat that we got from each butt. It produced a super product in minimal time and saved the wear and tear on my arms and back.
In my reviews I always give a rating of up to 5 smiley faces. I am so impressed with the Ro-Man Pork Puller that I am going to give it 10 smiley faces. Yes folks it’s really that good. You need to visit www.porkpuller.com to see this thing in action and order one today. We’re talking $47.95 total price (including shipping) in the United States. You too will be one happy Q’er.
As always, if you have a product (condiments, accessories, smokers, grills, etc.) you’d like me to test and write a review for, feel free to contact me via email at RedTodd@comcast.net and see how many times your product can make me smile. Until next time folks, take care and be safe.
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