Pumpkin Chili; Is There A More Fall Recipe?!
I challenge you to come up with a recipe that is more fall coded than a pumpkin chili. I bet you can’t! This recipe is everything we love about fall cooking, with all the zesty flavors of a hot bowl of chili, cut with a little bit of rich pumpkin flavor and additional seasonings for a sweet little surprise.
Just Like The Classic Chili But…
Like any good chili, you really only need a large pot to get cooking, it’s the ultimate convenient home cooking. This has all the hallmarks of the beefy bean classic, plenty of ground beef, beans, and tomato. We used Midamar’s 93% lean ground beef, there’s going to be plenty of liquid going into the pot and plenty of flavor from everything else in here that you really don’t need a fattier mix of beef. If you like 80% ground beef though, by all means use it, it’ll still taste great!
I always like a blend of black beans and red kidney beans in chili just to further diversify the flavors. Chili has too much going on in one pot to be one-note, so a mix of beans does a great job of adding different flavors and texture, and it’s also just satisfying to see the different ingredients you’ve got going on in there.
… With a Twist!
That all makes for a good chili, but it isn’t much of a pumpkin chili without, well, the pumpkin. Make sure you use pureed pumpkin in yours and NOT pumpkin pie filling. It’s a simple oversight that drastically changes the recipe, the filling comes pre seasoned and is waaay sweeter than just the pureed pumpkin. We aren’t making a dessert chili here and still want it loaded up with those classic savory seasonings.
‘Tis The Season For Seasoning
This gets the classic blend of garlic and onion powders, garlic, cumin, and of course chili powder. These make for a classic savory and smoky chili, but the addition of some rosemary and cinnamon add to the richness from the pumpkin perfectly. Rosemary to me always feels like a quintessential fall/winter seasoning. The weather cools down and the rosemary comes out, and a little bit of it goes a long way towards making this just feel like the perfect fall recipe.
Dive In With Plenty To Share
With all of this simmering together with some broth until it thickens up, it isn’t long before you have a hot pot of chili ready to eat! This isn’t a recipe that completely reinvents chili, but it is everything you love about chili but with a very tasty twist from the pumpkin.
Chili is already a fall favorite dish for me, and this one is awesome! It has a whole new very delicious dimension to the zesty cold-weather classic that I think chili lovers will find a lot to love here.
As always though, don’t take my word for it, you’ve gotta give it a try yourself! It’s a single pot recipe that makes a ton for sharing. If your family and friends think they know what to expect from chili, serve this up next time, I think they’ll really appreciate the tasty bowl of chili.
Let us know what you think of this recipe or what you did to make it your own and check out some of our other delicious Halal recipes!
