The pork steak sandwich is barbecue built around a cut that most of the country does not sell. A pork steak is sliced from the shoulder, the same fatty, connective-tissue-heavy muscle that elsewhere gets pulled, but here it is cut into a bone-in slab and cooked whole. That cut is the whole identity. It carries far more fat and collagen than a pork chop, so it can take a long, low cook over wood and a braise in sauce without going dry, which is exactly what the sandwich is engineered around.
The craft is in a two-stage cook that the cut demands. The steak is first grilled or smoked over wood until the outside takes color and the fat begins to render, then it is braised, often in a sweet, tangy tomato sauce, until the collagen breaks down and the meat turns tender enough to give under a bite without falling off the bone. A pork steak cooked only over direct heat stays tough; the braise is not optional, it is the step that converts a hard shoulder slice into sandwich meat. The sauce is the regional signature, a thick, sweet, vinegar-cut tomato style, and it is reduced enough to cling to the meat rather than run off it. The bread is a plain, soft, slightly sweet bun or sliced white, chosen to disappear: it soaks the sauce and the rendered fat and gives the hands a grip while the smoked, braised pork does the work. The bite is the rendered fat, the sweet-sharp sauce, and the soft crumb together, with the bone pulled before serving or eaten around.
The variations stay close to the same shoulder cut and the same sauce. A version finished with extra sauce on the bread runs wetter and leans on a sturdier roll; a smoked-only reading skips the braise and trades tenderness for more bark and bite. It sits in the same regional barbecue family as pulled pork and brisket, separate answers to turning slow-cooked meat into a sandwich, and those deserve their own articles rather than being crowded in here.