Pumpkin and Pork Chili

Every fall, there’s a recipe I can’t wait to make…

Pumpkin and Pork Chili

It warms my soul – literally and figuratively. It is sweet, spicy, and satisfying.

I wasn’t sure if I’d post this recipe, since its a riff off of a very old food network recipe that you can find here.

But over the decade and a half that I’ve been cooking this, I have consistently changed enough things that I can’t just send the old one to friends who want to make it. Instead, I send them a janky google doc with a million notes on how to change it.

Well, not anymore. Now I’ll send them this. And you can enjoy it too.

Is it a soup or a chili?

Let me start off by acknowledging that you may or may not consider this a chili at all.

Some people think chilis ABSOLUTELY need beans. Others say no beans at all. Some claim it needs red meat, others kidney beans…

To me, it’s all about chili powder. A chili tastes like dried, ground chilis. So if you have enough chili powder, it’s a chili.

You may not agree. And if so, go ahead and call this pumpkin and pork stew and still enjoy it.

Now, on to the recipe!

Ingredients

Chili (serves 6-8)
- 3.5 lbs pork shoulder (you’ll lose some weight when you trim the fat)
- 12 oz bottle of Mexican lager
- 1-3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (see notes below)
- 2 Tbsp oregano
- 1 large white onion
- 1 large (or 3 small) poblano pepper
- 4 roma tomatoes (see notes below)
- 6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
- 1/4 cup chili powder (yes, that much!)
- 1/8 tsp paprika
- 15 oz can of pumpkin puree (or 2 cups of fresh pumpkin puree, see notes below if you choose this option)
- 1/2 bunch Lacinato kale
- 1-2 Tbsp neutral oil (I prefer avocado oil for this)
- 2 limes
- cilantro for garnish
- salt and pepper to taste
Pumpkin Crema (+/- 2 cups)
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 cup ( aka 1/2 of a 15 oz can) pumpkin puree
- zest of one of the above limes
- salt to taste

Process

I’ll jump into a step-by-step in a moment, but I always like to know the overall flow of the recipe before I start. Here’s the order of operations…

Cook pork in a big pot
Make crema and put in fridge
Cook veggies in pan
Add veggies to pot with pork
Stew together briefly
Serve

Now in more detail…

Start by cutting the pork into 1-inch cubes, discarding an excess chunks of fat in the meat. Some fat is fine, but no one wants a cube of straight fat
In a large pot (or dutch oven) that will fit the entire finished soup, add the pork, beer, and a pinch of salt
Add water to pot until all meat is submerged by about 1-inch of liquid
Put pot over medium heat on stove

When the water begins to boil, the carbonation from the beer will catch the rendering fat from the pork, causing a foam to build up – scrape the foam from the top of the pot and throw away
Once foam is removed, add oregano and roughly chopped adobo peppers (see notes below!) to the pot and reduce to simmer
Cook until pork is completely tender (usually at least 45 minutes)

As the pork cooks, we’re going to make a crema (flavored sour cream)
- Note that this recipe makes about 2 cups of crema – in my family we ALWAYS make double. And it all gets used. But we’re sauce-fiends.
In a bowl, combine 1 cup of sour cream, 1 cup of canned pumpkin (see notes below), paprika, zest of one lime, and salt to taste
Taste your crema once fully mixed – add more lime zest or salt to taste
Store crema in fridge until ready to serve chili

Now to finish the chili – dice your onion, poblano(s) and tomatoes, all roughly the same size
Heat oil in large saute pan over medium-high heat and add chopped veggies
Add salt and pepper to taste, and cook until veggies are almost fully tender (onions should be nearly translucent and all liquid should have evaporated from the tomatoes
Lower heat to medium-low and add garlic and chili powder, then cook for 2-3 more minutes (careful not to burn the garlic!)
Add full can of pumpkin to pan and cook for 5-ish minutes
Turn off heat to pan and set aside until pork is ready

Let’s bring it all together now! Once pork is as tender as you’d like it, pour all the pumpkin veggies into the pot with the pork and stir till well-combined
Thinly slice kale and add to the chili
Cook for 10 minutes, until the kale is tender
Remove from heat and stir in the juice from the zested lime

Serve the chili with lime wedges, crema, and roughly chopped cilantro. It’s even better the second day, if it lasts that long

Notes

Here are a few important notes for making this recipe…

Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce
- This is the primary source of spice in your chili! So proceed with caution here – I have accidentally made this recipe almost inedibly spicy before. Remember that capsaicin (the chemical in peppers that makes them spicy) comes from the seeds. So more seeds = more spicy. Here’s a good rule of thumb
  - Mild Chili (almost no spice) – de-seed and roughly chop ONE pepper. Add a little extra sauce from the can for the smokiness
  - Medium Chili (some spice) – de-seed and roughly chop TWO peppers.
    - I usually do this level when serving chili to my kids / guests whose spice tolerance I don’t know
  - Spicy chili (pleasantly spicy but not overwhelming) – chop one pepper, seeds and all
  - Very spicy chili (pleasant, but only with the right crowd) – chop 2-3 peppers, seeds and all
- Note that if you double or triple this recipe, don’t necessarily double or triple the peppers. They are potent and can sneak up on you.
- If you go the spicy route, consider making a double batch of the crema. We always do, just cause we love it. Or serving with cornbread to soak up spice.
Roma Tomatoes
- This recipe specifically calls for roma style tomatoes – which are low on water and high on flesh relative to their weight. This means you’ll get more “meaty” tomatoes in your chili, instead of mostly tomato water.
- Whenever I cook soups / sauces with tomatoes I always use romas. They are denser and have a better texture when cooked – it’s why they’re almost exclusively used for canned tomatoes.
- You CAN use any old tomato for this recipe, but you’ll end up with a more water veggie saute that you’ll need to cook for longer to get dry
Canned vs. Fresh Pumpkin
- I list canned pumpkin in the ingredients here, since it is much more easily found than fresh pumpkin, BUT this recipe is GREAT with fresh pumpkin – you’ll just need to use a slightly different method.
- The primary difference between fresh pumpkin puree and canned pumpkin is water content – the canned variety is cooked down to be denser than fresh pumpkin. If you want to use fresh pumpkin, your mix will be slightly more watery (but taste better, IMO). That means…
  - For the chili, add a little over 2 cups of pumpkin to the veggies and cook for closer to 15 minutes, until the liquid all evaporates out and it’s thick
  - For the crema, either strain your pumpkin or cook it in a pot till the excess water drains. Then add to sour cream

A special way to serve

This chili is wonderful served as is. Or with cornbread.

But if you want to be a little extra autumnal, I LOVE serving this in a baked pumpkin.

Years ago for a friends birthday I baked a large pumpkin and filled it with chili – the pumpkin was tender enough that you could scoop out some sweet pumpkin with every laddle.

This time around my husband came up with a new idea – instead of serving all of it in a large pumpkin, what if we made “pumpkin bowls”?

So that’s what we did. We hollowed out a bunch of mini pie pumpkins, baked them till they were tender, and served them full of soup.

Was is a lot of work?

Yes.

Was it preposterous, fun, and worth it for the bit?

To us, yes.

And whatever pumpkin we didn’t eat our chickens got as a fall treat.

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Cara Can Cook