Pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) is a tool able to provide green extraction methods to further determine contaminants in food and the environment. The aim of this review is to offer a critical overview of the recent developments within this field and can be considered as an update of the previous that we published in 2015. Trends regarding sample treatment, solvents, in-cell clean-up approaches used in the extraction of organic contaminants are addressed. Special attention deserve those methods that include on-line clean up in the extraction cell. Comparison with other green techniques is also presented. The final objective of this review is to clearly define the role that this technique plays in the analysis of organic pollutants, their strengths and weaknesses, as well as the updated spectrum of applications for which PLE is an essential tool. •Update review of the PLE to extract contaminants in food and the environment.•Establishment of the applications for which PLE is advantageous.•Main analytical parameters of the different PLE procedures are discussed.•Advantages and limitations in the analysis are considered and evaluated.•Future trends and prospects are envisaged.