Welcome back to Our Country Kitchen – your best reference for insanely delicious Goodparla pasture-raised beef recipes! This week, we are thrilled to present to you our one-of-kind Slow-cooker Autumn Harvest Pumpkin Chili – featuring Goodparla’s mouthwatering ground beef.
We don’t know about ya’ll, but autumn is some of our family’s favorite time of the year and pumpkin is synonymous with fall flavors. This chili is exquisite, and the pumpkin makes this fall chili a hearty, fill you up dish!
Our very own Jay Butler dubbed this recipe, “award-winning chili” and we definitely agree! There may be a chili cook-off in our future – no promises though!
The best thing about this chili recipe is that it is a slow-cooker recipe. At Goodparla, our family is always extremely busy and one fastest ways to feed your family like a gourmet chef, is to throw everything into the slow-cooker with minimal prep, walk away and then have an amazing, better than restaurant quality, tasty dinner to put on your dinner table 8 hours later.
This recipe is a lot of fun, as you can swap out ingredients to suit your family’s preference, all while maintaining the base heartiness, goodness, and flavor. As long as you stick with the core recipe ingredients such as the ground beef, spices, onion, garlic, broth, pumpkin and diced tomatoes, you can go as wild as you’d like with substitutions and tailor this recipe for your needs.
This recipe calls for pinto beans, kidney beans and black beans, but you could definitely substitute chickpeas or white beans and you can also play with the amounts of each type of beans to get the balance and flavor you want most. This recipe calls for butternut squash, but you can use sweet potatoes instead or even both.
We love recipes that give us some wiggle room in Our Country Kitchen. They are fun and always sure to please even our most picky eaters.
Before we dive headfirst into this recipe, a note about the level of spiciness in our chili. This chili has a mildly spicy kick to it. Feel free to adjust the chili powder based on your spice tolerance and you can leave out the jalapeño if desired (although I personally think the jalapeño is small enough that it doesn’t add real heat and would alter the chili powder ratio). If removing some spice, however, keep in mind that some flavor will be lost. You can add a little more cumin, garlic, or onion powder in its place.
To finish off this delectable dish, you can top it with sour cream, shredded cheese, fresh chopped onion, or a mix of all three. We also highly recommend serving it with moist, perfect crumb Honey Cornbread – because cornbread & chili are such a natural pairing to us and besides, it’s delicious!
Don’t have a tried & true cornbread recipe? Don’t worry! We’ve got you covered! We’ve included one of our favorite Honey Cornbread recipes below.
A few key things to keep in mind as you make this recipe:
This recipe calls for 1 to 2 pounds of ground beef. We love a meaty chili, so we use about 1 ½ pounds of Goodparla ground beef and we recommend using 1 pound of ground beef minimum.
The recipe ‘as-is’ has a mildly spicy kick to it. You can tailor the spiciness of this recipe to your preferences. Add or subtract the jalapeño and chili powder to get the desired level of spicy but don’t forget to boost your cumin, garlic and onion powder in it’s place.
This makes a very large pot of chili – about 10 to 12 heaping one cup sized servings. We do not recommend scaling down this recipe but if you are afraid of the amount of leftovers, this chili freezes wonderfully for up to three months. To use, thaw overnight in the refrigerator and then heat in a large pot on medium heat for 20-30 minutes
While you don’t have to use a slow-cooker, this is our preferred method for the easiest & most flavorful chili. If you wanted to make this directly on the stove top, we’ve included those instructions below as well!
You don’t have to use our honey cornbread recipe (although we think it’s the best – we may be a bit biased). You can use any recipe you want or even the prepackaged kind for ease. We recommend either Marie Callender's Honey Corn Bread Mix (or original) or Krusteaz Honey Cornbread & Muffin Mix
Keep reading below for the ingredients & instructions for ‘Our Country Kitchen’ Slow-cooker Autumn Harvest Pumpkin Chili & Honey Cornbread.
Slow-cooker Autumn Harvest Pumpkin Chili with Honey Cornbread
An incredible combination of ground beef, pumpkin, butternut squash, spices and beans that will make for a truly satisfying, award tasting hearty & delicious chili that showcases all the flavors of autumn that we love the most. Served with a melt-in-your-mouth honey cornbread.
Makes 10 – 12 one heaping cup servings of chili & 9 large servings of cornbread.
Chili Ingredient List:
1 to 2 lbs. Goodparla ground beef
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ of a large yellow onion (about 1 cup chopped)
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 small jalapeño, minced (remove seeds and ribs)
6 minced garlic cloves, divided in half
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 ½ teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
2 cups beef or vegetable broth
3 (14 ounce) cans of petite diced tomatoes – do not drain. *You can also substitute 3 cans of ‘Rotel’ but beware of increased spice!)
1 (15 ounce) can pinto beans – drained & rinsed
1 (15 ounce) can kidney beans – drained & rinsed
½ (15 ounce) can black beans – drained and rinsed
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
½ large butternut squash OR 1 large sweet potato – peeled & diced (about one heaping cup)
Autumn Harvest Chili Instructions:
Makes 10-12 heaping 1 cup servings
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Slow-cooker Time: 8 hours*
Total Time: 8 hours 20 minutes*
*Alternative stove top method cook time is 40 minutes with a total time of 60 minutes.
Slow Cooker Method:
In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add half of the minced garlic (3 tablespoons) and stir until fragrant. Add the ground beef and salt and pepper to taste. Brown the ground beef until fully cooked through about 7 to 10 minutes. Drain any excess grease and placed cooked beef into a large slow cooker.
Combine all the spices (salt, fresh ground black pepper, cinnamon, cumin, chili powder, onion powder) together in a small bowl. Stir thoroughly and set aside.
Add the broth and canned tomatoes to the slow cooker. Add the mixed spices.
Stir thoroughly.
Add the rest of the ingredients to the slow cooker mix until all ingredients are evenly distributed.
Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours
Stovetop Method:
In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add half of the minced garlic (3 tablespoons) and stir until fragrant. Add the onion, bell peppers, and jalapeno. Stir and cook for about 3 minutes. Add the ground beef and salt and pepper to taste. Brown the ground beef until fully cooked through about 7 to 10 minutes. Drain any excess grease and place cooked mixture in a large pot or dutch oven and set to medium-high heat.
Add the broth, canned tomatoes, the remaining minced garlic and the spices to the pot. Mix thoroughly and cook for about 2 minutes.
Add all remaining ingredients to the pot and place lid or cover on. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Honey Cornbread Ingredients:
Non-stick cooking spray OR 1 tablespoon softened butter
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon plus ½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup your choice of buttermilk, whole milk, or almond milk
2 eggs
4 tablespoons melted butter
¼ cup honey
Honey Cornbread Instructions:
Makes 9 large servings
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Total Time: 35 minutes
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Use an 8-inch or 9-inch square baking pan and either spray with the non-stick cooking spray or softened butter to grease the pan.
In a large bowl, mix together the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.
Make a well in the middle of the dry mixture and add milk, eggs, butter and honey.
Stir until just combined but do not overmix!
Pour batter into the prepared pan and bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown. If you used a smaller pan, your bake time will be longer than if you use a 9-inch pan.
Cool for at least 10 minutes.
Enjoyed this recipe? Make sure you are signed up for our Newsletter to get weekly recipes from ‘Our Country Kitchen’ as well as following us on social media!