How to cook frozen pork chops Instant Pot style. From rock hard to perfectly tender in minutes. A healthy dinner you can make even if you forgot to defrost!

We experimented with making frozen pork chops Instant Pot style until we got it just right! Now we can share this easy InstaPot recipe with all of you so if you are forgetful too you can have dinner ready and nobody will be the wiser. 😉 (affiliate links present)
Actually, I wrote an entire post about cooking frozen meat in Instant Pot because I did it so often! From a frozen pork shoulder Instant Pot recipe to chicken and more you’ll be surprised how well it turns out.
If you need easy Ninja Foodi recipes, you can use that pot instead.
FIRST – You should sign up for my free newsletter so you get new posts emailed to you twice a week and never miss out on anything! Now let’s start with a few basic tips:
- Make sure to Bookmark our InstaPot recipes page. We add new ones each week!
- Then PRINT this —–> Instant Pot cooking times cheat sheet that will help you understand how long meat, vegetables and beans take to cook in your pressure cooker.
- This is a great InstaPot cookbook and a set of wooden utensils are great to grab too.
- I HIGHLY recommend you buy this non stick pot.
- You should still deglaze pressure cooker after sautéing but it won’t have as many issues with this better liner.
For reference, this is the pressure cooker I have (a 6 quart) and use for all recipe creations.

Instant Pot frozen pork chops
Here are a few questions you might have before you get started:
Can you put frozen pork in Instant Pot?
Absolutely. We’ve made Instant Pot frozen pork loin before and that came out great. Then we moved on to chops which we share with you here. Tender and juicy in no time.
Frozen pork roast Instant Pot style is amazing too.
Any other method other than the slow cooker works fine. Steaming them essentially in a pressure cooker is our favorite way. Follow our steps here so you can try it too.
It will take about 50% longer than if you had defrosted pork chops. In the oven it is close to 50 minutes, in an Instant Pot it is only 12 minutes!
Now this isn’t something I do on purpose. I still would recommend cooking from raw instead of rock hard, but stuff happens. In a pinch it’s nice to have this information handy so you can still eat.

Can I put frozen meat in my InstaPot?
I think we’ve answered that one. Now you just have to get the hang of it. We added vegetables on the bottom too because why not.
The trick to that is if you want to enjoy those with your meat, cut them quite large.
- Frozen chops
- Carrots
- Celery
- Broth or water
- Trivet with handles
Pork dry rub
We typically use our steak dry rub on almost everything no matter what type of meat it is, or how we cook it.
- Brown sugar
- Garlic salt
- Salt and pepper
- Smoked paprika

It doesn’t matter if you have bone in pork chops or boneless, these are the latter. The cooking time seems to be the same when you pressure cook these.
Of course you won’t be able to brown the pork chops beforehand, but you could do 2 minutes per side at the end if you wanted. I personally want them as tender as possible so I don’t.
If you have really small pieces I might adjust the time to 10 minutes but I tend to buy medium size and thickness and 12 is just right.

The biggest thing to remember is that these need the steam to release naturally and slowly.
Do not do a quick release or it won’t finish cooking slowly at the end so they’re nice and soft.
To get the rub to stick you could rub a bit of olive oil on the outsides.
Time needed: 12 minutes
Frozen Instant Pot pork chops recipe
- Prepare
Chop vegetables into large chunks. In a small mix dry rub ingredients together. Rub on both sides of frozen chops generously.
Put trivet into pot. Add vegetables on top, then pour chicken broth over the top. Place meat on top of everything. - Cook
Close lid and pressure valve. Cook on high pressure for 12 minutes.
When done allow pressure to naturally release, this will take about 15 minutes. Release any remaining pressure, should be gone. - Enjoy
Remove meat and vegetables, enjoy together with some white rice.
If you need instructions for air fryer frozen pork chops we have that too.

Looking for more Instant Pot recipes? We have over a hundred of these! They don’t always have pork either.
Mix it up and enjoy chicken, seafood and beef the other nights. A few of our favorites are:
- Instant Pot casseroles are the best because if you have any leftovers you can just throw them in.
- Need to know how to cook a frozen Instant Pot roast too? We have instructions for that.
- We have cooked thawed and frozen Instant Pot shrimp. Eat as is or in some fettuccini.
Already defrosted? You can make pressure cooker pork chops with gravy this way. We’ve made a pork stew Instant Pot recipe that’s amazing too.

Want to see a few of my favorite things that I am totally obsessed with?? Take a peek and see how many you might already have…twinsies!
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***** If you LOVED this recipe give it 5 Stars below and let everyone know what you thought about it. 😉

Frozen Pork Chops Instant Pot
Equipment
Ingredients
- 4 pork chops frozen
- 1 c chicken broth
- 3 stalks celery cut into large chunks
- 2 carrots cut into large chunks
- 1/2 onion sliced
- dry rub
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp garlic salt
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
Instructions
- Chop vegetables into large chunks.
- In a small mix dry rub ingredients together. Rub on both sides of frozen chops generously.
- Put trivet into pot. Add vegetables on top, then pour broth over the top. Place meat on top of everything.
- Close lid and pressure valve. Cook on high pressure for 12 minutes.
- When done allow pressure to naturally release.
- Remove meat and veggies, enjoy together.
Suzanah
Wednesday 12th of July 2023
10/10 would recommend this recipe!! It turned out so amazing! I prefer sweeter foods and I love honey garlic! So for my veggies I did celery, carrots, a sweet potato, a whole jumbo sweet onion, and a whole bulb of garlic (peeled of course). Then I added about 2 tablespoons of honey with the chicken broth and trust me when I say… AMAZING! The pork chops came out so juicy and tender and moist!! Very impressed! Thank you!😍
Susan
Sunday 11th of June 2023
Definitely a keeper … grab 2 thick chops out of freezer after church and meal completed by 1:40! Mad a couple changes - we don’t like celery so I put sweet peppers and celery salt. I was glad I read comments and let it de-pressure naturally!
The Typical Mom
Wednesday 14th of June 2023
Glad they were a hit, thanks for the note!
Jeannie
Friday 5th of May 2023
I have thinner pork chops so I reduced my time to 8 minutes. I didn’t have chicken broth but did have a can of Progresso chicken rice and veggies. I had celery tho and onion. Crossing my fingers!!!!
Alaina
Sunday 19th of March 2023
I can’t wait to try this tonight. Do you hit the steam button or the pressure cooker button? Then set to 12 mins.
Thank you!!
Ron
Monday 12th of December 2022
Around how long to naturally release pressure after the 12 minute pressure cooking is done?
The Typical Mom
Tuesday 13th of December 2022
Maybe 15 min?