The Pumpkin Chili that ruined me for regular chili was the seventh stop on an eight-stop food walk through Morton, Illinois, in the middle of October. Everything before it had been good. This was the one I kept thinking about on the drive back.
The tour was supposed to end at a bakery. It ended instead at Dana Kessler’s house on a side street off Jefferson, because she was hosting the last stop out of her own kitchen and had invited the whole group of us in.
Dana’s Kitchen in Morton, Illinois
She was in a flannel shirt with the sleeves shoved up past her elbows and a dish towel tucked into her waistband like a holster. Her kitchen had a yellow laminate counter and a wall calendar with the festival dates circled in red pen.
There were nine of us crowded around a pot big enough to bathe a toddler in. She handed me the wooden spoon without asking and told me to keep breaking up the beef while she talked.
I stirred too gently. She took my wrist, not roughly, and pushed down. The beef needs to come apart into crumbs, not chunks, she said, or the chili goes lumpy and you spend the rest of the night apologising for it.
Then she corrected me a second time, when I went to dump the pumpkin in with the tomatoes still cold. Wait until the tomatoes are hot and the bottom of the pot is scraped clean, she said. Otherwise the purée sits in streaks and never really joins in.
The Thing Everybody Gets Wrong About Pumpkin Chili
Dana had strong feelings about one can in particular. She held up a tin of pumpkin pie filling from her own pantry, the kind she keeps for actual pie, and said this is the reason most people think they hate pumpkin chili.
Pie filling is only about 65% pumpkin. The rest is corn syrup, molasses, ginger, cloves, citric acid. Put that in a savoury pot and the added sugars brown too fast and too dark, and you end up with something that tastes confusedly like dessert. You want 100% pumpkin purée. No salt, no sweetener, nothing else on the label.
The other thing she said, and I have repeated it to about fifteen people since, is that you should not be able to taste the pumpkin. It is not the star. It is a thickener, a body-builder, the reason the chili coats a spoon like velvet instead of sliding off it.
She also set me straight on the history, which I had wrong in my head. I assumed this was some old Mesoamerican thing, since pumpkins have been cultivated in the Americas for over 9,000 years and chile peppers were being bred for yield thousands of years before that. But pumpkin chili as a named dish is recent and thoroughly American. It went on the menu at the Morton Pumpkin Festival in 1985 and spread out from there through cook-offs and Halloween tables. Morton calls itself the Pumpkin Capital of the World, and on that particular week in October it is very hard to argue.
What I Used
- Olive oil, two tablespoons
- Ground beef, 85/15, about a pound and a half
- One big yellow onion, diced
- One red bell pepper, seeded and diced
- Four cloves of garlic, minced
- Chili powder, cumin, smoked paprika
- Ground cinnamon and nutmeg, small amounts, savoury-supporting only
- Cayenne, optional, for people who want it to bite
- A big can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes with the juice
- One 15 oz can of 100% pumpkin purée
- Kidney beans and black beans, drained and rinsed
- Two cups of low-sodium beef broth
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Cooking It Back Home
I made it the first Sunday it dipped under 70 degrees at my place, which in California is basically a festival in itself. Windows open. The neighbour’s wind chime going.
I used the Dutch oven with the chipped enamel on the lip, the one that has survived two moves and a dropped cabinet door. My good chef’s knife, the one with the handle worn smooth on the left side from how I hold it, did the onion and the pepper while the oil came up to a shimmer.
The fire-roasted tomatoes came from the Mexican grocery on Vermont, where the canned goods are cheaper and the fire-roasted ones actually taste roasted. The pumpkin purée was just supermarket stock. Label checked twice, because I am not making Dana’s point for her the hard way.
Thirty minutes of uncovered simmering is a long time to stand around. I put on Gillian Welch, made a small plate of tortilla chips and the last of some salsa, and stirred every ten minutes the way you are supposed to so the pumpkin does not catch on the bottom. It will catch if you ignore it. Ask me how I know.
The first time I made this pumpkin chili recipe at home I got impatient with the spice-toasting step and let the garlic go a shade too far. Bitter edge to the whole pot. Now I count it out loud, sixty to ninety seconds, stirring constantly, and pull it the second the kitchen smells like a spice tin that has been opened in a warm room.
You know it is ready when a spoon dragged across the surface leaves a trail for a second before it closes back over.
Ways I Have Changed It
Ground turkey works if that is what is in the freezer. Knock about five minutes off the simmer, because it dries out faster than beef and you will notice.
For a meatless pot, skip the beef, add a third can of beans and swap to vegetable broth. I have done this twice and honestly did not miss the meat either time, which surprised me.
At the table I put out shredded cheddar, sour cream, green onions, cilantro, diced avocado and roasted pumpkin seeds. Cornbread if I have the energy. Tortilla chips if I do not, which is most of the time.
The Next Day Is Better
I always say chili is better on day two. Except I ate half the pot standing at the counter the night I made it, so clearly I do not always believe myself.
But it is true. Cold from the fridge, spooned straight out of the container at eleven at night, the cinnamon finally comes forward without announcing itself. It keeps four days refrigerated and three months frozen, though mine has never once made it to a freezer.
I still think about Dana’s hand on my wrist over that pot. Some recipes you learn from a page. This one I learned from somebody who was not going to let me do it wrong in her own kitchen.
Pumpkin Chili
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat until it shimmers.
- Add the ground beef, diced onion, and diced bell pepper. Cook for 7 to 8 minutes, breaking the meat apart with a wooden spoon, until the beef is browned and the onion has softened.
- Add the minced garlic, chili powder, cumin, smoked paprika, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cayenne if using. Stir constantly for 60 to 90 seconds. The spices should smell toasted and coat everything in the pot. Do not let the garlic burn.
- Pour in the fire-roasted tomatoes with their juice and scrape the bottom of the pot to lift any browned bits.
- Stir in the pumpkin purée until it fully dissolves into the tomatoes with no orange streaks remaining.
- Add the drained kidney beans, black beans, and beef broth. Season with the salt and black pepper and stir to combine.
- Bring the chili to a boil over high heat, then reduce to low so it holds a gentle simmer.
- Simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes so the pumpkin does not catch on the bottom. The chili should thicken enough that a spoon dragged across the surface leaves a brief trail.
- Taste and adjust salt, heat, and chili powder. Let the pot rest off the heat for 10 minutes before serving so the flavors settle.