Instant Pot Apple Cherry Pork Loin - Dump and Go Dinner
This freezer cooking recipe for Instant Pot Apple Cherry Pork Loin is so satisfying! Full of flavor, all you need are apples, cherries, onions, apple juice, and pork loin for this easy and delicious family favorite you'll want to include on your next freezer meal plan!
Ingredients
- 1 ⅓ pounds quarter Boneless Pork Loin
- ½ cups Apple Juice
- ⅛ teaspoons Salt
- ⅛ teaspoons Black Pepper
- 2 cups dice Apple
- ⅔ cups pit Cherry
- ⅓ cups dice Onion
- ⅓ cups dice Celery
- ½ cups Water
Supplies
Cooking Instructions
Freeze For Later Cooking Day Directions
These directions help you cook or prepare this meal PRIOR to being frozen for serving later (see Serving Day Directions when you are ready to prepare it to eat).
Why would I want to freeze this?
- Divide pork, half of apple juice, salt and pepper among indicated number of round freezer containers.
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Make From Frozen Serving Day Directions
These directions help you cook or reheat this meal AFTER it's been frozen for when you are ready to eat it.
- Prep from frozen
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Make It Now Cooking Directions
These directions are for cooking this recipe to serve immediately and NOT to freeze for later.
- **Due to the nature of pressure cooking there is always room for inconsistency. The times given here are based on 4 servings fresh. If you are using more servings you may need to increase your cooking time.**
- Place pork, apple juice, water, salt and pepper in inner pot.
- Lock lid into place and seal steam nozzle.
- Cook on high pressure for 30 minutes.
- Natural release for 5 minutes then quick release any remaining pressure.
- Add in remaining ingredients. Lock lid in place.
- Cook on high pressure for 3 minutes.
- Quick release pressure.
Nutrition Facts
- Servings Per Recipe
- 4 Servings
- Serving Size
- about 6 ounces Amount Per Serving
- Calories
- 334
- Total Fat
- 13g
- Saturated Fat
- 2g
- Trans Fat
- 0g
- Cholesterol
- 97mg
- Sodium
- 135mg
- Total Carbohydrates
- 22g
- Fiber
- 2g
- Sugar
- 18g
- Protein
- 33g
- WW Freestyle
- 6
60 Comments
Join the discussionA little confused, do you cook this once for forty minutes, then freeze it then saute (5) and cook again another 40?What if you don’t freeze it?Can the first cooking instructions be ignored then?
The Directions at the top (steps 1-5) are if you want to make the meal fresh. If you want to make this meal for a freezer meal, you would put all ingredients raw in freezer container (freezer directions steps 1-2) and then follow Serving day directions the day you want to eat your freezer meal.
There are THREE sets of directions based on how you are preparing this recipe:
Set 1 – Directions = cooking it to serve for dinner WITHOUT freezing that night, fresh!
Set 2 – Freezing Directions = directions for freezing the recipe WITHOUT cooking.
Bet 3 – Serving Directions = directions for COOKING the FROZEN product you created in Set 2.
To Recap: Set 1 is to serve tonight for dinner. Set 3 is if you did set 2 and froze.
Hope this helps. Happy cooking!
Saw you video on FB Live today and decided to try this recipe. I don’t mind substituting what I have on hand, but I have a question. For the cherries…. what do you use? Fresh? It looks like dried in the picture. Since I didn’t have them, I used dried cranberries. Seriously, apple cranberry pork sounds pretty fantastic too! I’ll let you know how it turns out. 🙂
Yes, the cherries in our picture dried. We think cranberries are a great substitution. How was it? 🙂
I too like to use what I have on hand & was wondering what I’d use for the cherries… I had a bag of frozen berries in my freezer, which I added, then saw your suggestion dried cranberries. I had a bag of fresh cranberries in my freezer, so I thought, why not…. I JUST made the pork roast using fresh cranberries, I had leftover from Christmas dinner. It looks amazing! Since it is now too late to eat dinner, will let you know how it tastes, tomorrow.
We can’t wait to hear how it was!! ?
I’m not a fan of cherries, so was thinking about this with cranberries. How was it?
My pork loin was 3.30 lbs. so I put three times the Apple juice….cooking it for 30 min. I hope that’s enough?
How did it turn out? Were you cooking from frozen or from fresh?
Heya, i was wondering what “2/3 cup pit cherry” is ??
Heya, it’s 2/3 cups of already pitted cherries. Our system doesn’t do past tense so you might see this in other places where it says “1 cup cook chicken” that means 1 cup of already cooked chicken. Enjoy!
When making to serve now, how much water do you add?
Great question! 1/2 cup! Enjoy!
Nm, I see that it’s 1/2 a cup!
Do you cut the pork loin before freezing/cooking? I’ve never cooked a large piece of meat like this in the IP and want to make sure it is cooked through. Also, do you have to cook it using the trivet when cooking from frozen? I notice the same day directions do not use this. Thanks!
Julie, To answer your question, I do cut mine before cooking because I have a large family and so I need a larger Pork Loin, and it won’t fit in my Instant Pot without cutting. So it probably depends on the size of your loin. As far as a trivet, you do not need to use it. If you *want* to use a trivet to keep the pork from sitting in the liquid–that is fine and shouldn’t affect the recipe–but it isn’t required.
Thank you soooo much. The instruction to put the trivet in the instant pot wasn’t clear to me.
Hi. I am curious… why saute on the trivet in the make from frozen instructions? Is it to thaw the meat a bit? Thank you!
Jamie, it’s to keep the pork from sitting in the liquid. If you opt not to use your trivet, it should still turn out. Enjoy!
I have frozen pork loin already, do I need to freeze the other ingredients as well to make this or can I add them fresh to the frozen….will if make a difference in cooking time?….. sorry if question seams stupid I am new to the Instand Pot
Not a stupid question at all! Since you add the apples, cherries, etc. after the pork is done you could have the pork frozen and other ingredients fresh when you make this. You wouldn’t need to adjust the time since it will take longer for the Instant Pot to come to pressure with the frozen pork. You’ll just want to put the loin on a trivet and use the saute function for 5 minutes before you lock the lid into place and seal steam nozzle. Feel free to chat or email us if you have more questions!
Hoping to make this tonight…my pork is frozen, I still put water in the pot, right?
Yes, still put in the water!
Try apple juice. it is wonderful.
This is absolutely delicious!!!
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What would you suggest serving with this dish.
Potatoes, Salad, Brussel Sprouts, or Wild Rice would all make great sides for this recipe.
Coleslaw is my favorite. Cook sliced apples in butter, cinnamon, and sweeten to taste – cooked quickly and is a great side dish
Tricia your instructions are confusing. Maybe a little editing and rewrite is in order.
I am sorry you feel that way. What exactly do you find confusing?
Hi! I’m making this right now in my brand new INSTANT POT DUO MINI 3QT and need to know if I turn the cooker off during NPR or leave it on the default keep warm setting? i realize I may not get an answer before I need it so I will leave it on keep warm and hope for the best.
Leave it on during the NPR is correct. How did it go?
Good recipe. I am wondering if you really need the water. As the pork cooks water condensate in the pot. Seemed like there was too much liquid. Hubby liked!
So happy that you liked it!
As for water – everyone is different. Some people have had trouble getting their pot to pressure without the water BUT between the apple juice and the juice from the pork you should be fine. I think that if it is frozen solid you need a little liquid just to get the pot to get to pressure but if there is enough condensation then you should be fine.
I’m new to Instant Pots, and I was worried about water too. The directions that come with the pot say you should always include at least 25 oz. of water (I presume apple juice counts). And of course, this recipe has much less than that. Can you comment?
We’ve mostly found that the pot only needs about 1/2 cup of liquid (any kind, not specifically water) to come to pressure. All of our recipes have been thoroughly tested, so if you follow the instructions as written, you shouldn’t have any problems!
I could only find pork loin in 2.75 lbs. How much more time would I need to cook this amount?
You should not need to increase cooking time for the recipe. However, I would suggest cutting the loin in half to ensure it being fully cooked through, though.
This looked so good! I followed direction and it completely burned! So sad! Will try again ti see if I did something wrong!
Donna, I’m so sorry that you had a poor experience. The variables in pressure cooking make it difficult for us to give an exact time (how thick the pork loin is, etc), but we do our best to give you the right time and setting. All of our recipes are tested by test cooks as well, so that we can verify results. If you try again, maybe set it for 2/3 of the stated time and then check it at that point and see if that works better. Again, I’m sorry for the frustration!!
I have a pork loin 2.5 oz. not frozen. Do you suggest cooking 30 minutes on meat / stew ? Should I cut it in half ? Or thirds ?
The “Make it Now” directions are written assuming that the meat is NOT frozen so simply follow those. We do recommend that you quarter the roast, this helps for even, slightly shorter cooking times.
Can I cook a the meat frozen?
Yes, you can! We’ve found that for most recipes in the Instant Pot, the cook time is the same whether cooking from fresh or frozen (but with frozen it will take longer for the pot to come to pressure).
Instructions say add ingredients plus water to instant pot. No quantity for water in ingredient list. Did I miss something somewhere?
Serving Day ingredients list 1/2 cup of water!
I made this last night with some modifications. I didn’t have apple juice on hand so I used some OceanSpray Cranberry-Cherry Juice (which is apple juice based). I also didn’t have any cherries on hand but added the remainder of a jar a sour-cherry preserves. My wife and daughter loved it.
I made this earlier this evening using a frozen pork loin (2.25 lbs), 1 C organic apple juice, 1/2C water, salt/pepper @45 minutes high pressure (on trivet), then added apple, onions, celery, and dried cranberries @ 3 minutes high pressure. I seriously do not think we have ever had pork so tender/moist/flavorful! I added the extra time due to the size of the roast, based on recommended cooking times at other sites; and the extra liquid because I wanted something like a broth to ladle over potatoes later this week.
Highly recommend this recipe! This was supposed to be for two meals for two of us and we struggled not to finish it!
That’s great to hear! Thanks so much for sharing your feedback. We’re so glad you loved it!
Both the Make It Now and the cook from frozen have the same cooking time of 30 minutes. Is that in error? 30 minutes seems like a long time for fresh pork.
It is not an error. Pressure cooking time for pork can vary greatly depending on the recipe. All of our recipes have been thoroughly tested by our test cooks, so you can rest assured that the cooking time is correct. In general, cook time is the same for both fresh and frozen because frozen takes longer to come to pressure.
Why does it show 2 containers, the bowl and the baggie? Is it because it all won’t fit into one container? So do you put the contents of both into the pot on cooking day?
Hi Kati, how many servings are you cooking for? You can fit 4 servings in one Instant Pot freezer container. If you are cooking more than 4 servings, then it will have you put the contents into 2 freezer containers (evenly split). And then you’re thinking is absolutely correct, you would put both containers in the Instant Pot on cooking day. Hope this helps explain. Feel free to jump into our chat or send us an email at info@onceamonthmeals.com for more troubleshooting help.
Apologize if this is a stupid question, but I have a large family and am using a 5.5lb pork loin. Since that is about quadruple the size of your pork loin, do I also need to quadruple the other ingredients (including the water)? Or would just doubling the other ingredients suffice? I will be making it all fresh.
One issue you may run into is the capacity of your Instant Pot. You need to have at least 1.5 – 2 cups of liquid for that amount of meat.
I had 1.5 lbs pork loin, which I cooked for the 30 minutes and it came out dry. I probably should have tried 15-20 minutes. I just got my instant pot for Christmas and I am figuring out that there is a learning curve to pressure cooking. I will have to try again until I get it right.
So, no one else has asked this… if you freeze the pork loin, apples, and apple juice in a bag….how then can you add just the pork and apple juice, and then add the “remaining ingredients” later? They would all be frozen together, no?
The “remaining ingredients” is referring to the ingredients that were placed in the quart bag. They will be frozen together yes – but running the bag under water will loosen it up from the bag and allow it to go in the IP.