Ok, pumpkin chili. I know it sounds a little odd, my husband pulled a face the first time I mentioned it too, but stay with me here because it’s really just your normal everyday chili that comes out thicker and richer since a can of pumpkin goes into the pot, and no, it doesn’t taste anything like pumpkin pie. It’s more like the sauce turns silky and a tiny bit sweet, which mellows out all those smoky spices, and the color goes this deep rusty orange that just looks like October in a bowl. I make mine with ground turkey and a couple kinds of beans and it all happens in one pot in about 45 minutes.
Got pumpkin fans at home? There’s more where this came from in our savory and sweet pumpkin recipes.
Seems half the internet had the same craving, because Pinterest searches for “pumpkin chili recipe” in the US are up something like 600% over the last month and running around 20% above where they were this time last year.
RECIPE
Pumpkin Chili
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 1/2 lb ground turkey or lean ground beef
- 1 large yellow onion diced
- 1 red bell pepper diced
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 2 tbsp chili powder
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree not pumpkin pie filling
- 1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes
- 1 can (15 oz) kidney beans drained and rinsed
- 1 can (15 oz) black beans drained and rinsed
- 1 1/2 cups chicken broth
- 1 tbsp maple syrup or brown sugar optional
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- sour cream, shredded cheddar, green onions, avocado and roasted pepitas for serving
Method
- Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the turkey and cook, breaking it up, until no pink remains, about 6 minutes.
- Add the onion and bell pepper and cook 5 minutes until softened. Stir in the garlic for 30 seconds.
- Add the chili powder, cumin, paprika, cinnamon, oregano and salt. Stir for 1 minute so the spices toast.
- Stir in the pumpkin, crushed tomatoes, both beans, broth and maple syrup. Bring to a boil.
- Lower the heat, partly cover and simmer 25 to 30 minutes, stirring now and then, until thick.
- Stir in the vinegar, taste and adjust the salt and heat. Serve with your favorite toppings.
Notes
Private Notes
Tried this recipe?
Let us know how it was!So what does pumpkin actually do in chili?
The way I think about it, the pumpkin’s a thickener that just happens to taste good. The puree is mostly fiber and water, so while the chili bubbles away it sort of melts into the tomatoes and gives you that body without needing flour or cornmeal or whatever. It rounds out the acid from the tomatoes and dials the heat down a touch too, which might be why my kids (who normally fish the beans out of chili one by one) actually finish their bowls of this.
Heads up though, and yes I’ve totally done this: don’t grab pumpkin pie filling by accident, it sits right beside the plain puree and the cans look nearly the same, except the filling is already sweet and full of nutmeg and cloves, so just double check the label says “100% pure pumpkin” before you leave the store.
The spices that make it work
Chili powder and cumin and smoked paprika do most of the work in this pot, and then I sneak in half a teaspoon of cinnamon, which sounds wrong but doesn’t make it sweet at all, it just makes the whole thing taste warmer and rounder kind of like Cincinnati chili or a good mole does.
Toast your spices for a minute in the pot after the onions and peppers soften, before you add anything wet, it makes a real difference. Then right at the end, a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. Sounds strange, but it brightens the whole pot and nobody can figure out what you did.
Turkey, beef, or skip the meat
Most of the time I use ground turkey, it’s lighter and you can taste the pumpkin more. Cook it till it hits 165°F, that’s the safe minimum temperature for ground poultry. Beef is richer, more of a classic chili vibe, I’d go 85% lean and pour off the fat after it browns. Going meatless? skip it, throw in a third can of beans plus a cup of diced sweet potato, swap to veggie broth. My vegetarian friend Sarah asks for that version every single October.
Stovetop or slow cooker?
On the stove it’s ready in about 45 minutes, and if you let it simmer longer it only gets better. For the slow cooker, brown the meat with the onion and pepper first, because raw ground meat goes grainy and greasy in there, then everything else goes in and it cooks on low 6 to 8 hours. If you like that kind of set-it-and-forget-it dinner, my crockpot loaded potato soup is another good one.
Toppings and what to serve with it
At our house it’s a build-your-own-bowl situation. Little dishes of sour cream (or Greek yogurt), sharp cheddar, green onions, avocado, cilantro, pickled jalapeños, crushed tortilla chips, and roasted pepitas, which are my fave because they add crunch and kind of tie it back to the pumpkin.
On the side, a square of Mexican sweet corn bread is hard to beat. If you’re going all out with a pumpkin-themed dinner, start with a cup of my roasted pumpkin soup and finish with pumpkin bars. A bit much maybe, but it’s October.
Storing and freezing it
Everyone knows chili tastes better the next day once the flavors get cozy with each other, and it’ll keep about four days covered in the fridge. When I freeze it I let it cool all the way first, ladle it into freezer bags and lay them flat so they stack, and they’re good for around three months, then I thaw a bag in the fridge overnight and heat it on the stove with a splash of broth because the pumpkin keeps drinking up liquid while it sits.
Questions I get about pumpkin chili
Can you actually taste the pumpkin?
Barely, honestly. There’s a soft earthy sweetness in the background and the texture is smoother, but it still tastes like chili first.
Fresh pumpkin instead of canned, does that work?
Yep, I’ve done it with about 1 3/4 cups of roasted, mashed sugar pumpkin, or you can toss in a couple cups of little raw pumpkin or butternut cubes along with the broth and let them simmer till soft.
Mine’s too thin, how do I thicken it?
Leave the lid off and let it bubble another 10 or 15 minutes, or squish some of the beans against the side of the pot with the back of your spoon.
Is it healthy?
Pretty much, with lean turkey and all those beans you get loads of protein and fiber and not much fat, it’s really the cheese and sour cream that pile on the calories so go as easy or as wild as you like there.
One last tip: leftovers get really thick in the fridge since the pumpkin and beans keep soaking things up, so when I reheat a bowl I splash in some broth and squeeze a little lime over it and it tastes brand new again.
