Pork-and-Pumpkin Chili

  4.7 – 88 reviews  • Pumpkin
Level: Easy
Total: 1 hr 40 min
Cook: 1 hr 40 min
Yield: 6-8 servings

Ingredients

  1. 3 pounds boneless pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
  2. 1 12-ounce bottle Mexican lager
  3. Kosher salt
  4. 2 to 3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, finely chopped
  5. 3 teaspoons dried oregano, preferably Mexican
  6. 1 15-ounce can pure pumpkin (about 1 3/4 cups)
  7. 1/2 cup sour cream
  8. 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  9. 2 medium tomatoes, roughly chopped
  10. 1 poblano pepper, seeded and chopped
  11. 2 medium white onions, diced
  12. 1/4 cup chili powder, plus more for sprinkling
  13. 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  14. 1 bunch mustard greens, stems removed, leaves roughly chopped
  15. Lime wedges, for serving

Instructions

  1. Combine the pork, beer, 3 cups water and 2 teaspoons salt in a large pot and bring to a simmer over medium heat, skimming the foam off the surface. Add the chipotles and 1 1/2 teaspoons oregano, cover and cook about 30 minutes.
  2. Mix 3 tablespoons pumpkin, the sour cream and salt to taste in a bowl; cover and chill.
  3. Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the tomatoes, poblano, onions and 2 teaspoons salt; cook until soft, 15 minutes. Add the remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons oregano, the chili powder and garlic; cook 5 minutes. Add the remaining pumpkin and cook 5 minutes.
  4. Add the tomato mixture to the pork and simmer until the meat is tender, about 30 minutes. Add the greens and cook 10 more minutes. Season with salt. Ladle the chili into bowls; top with the pumpkin cream and more chili powder. Serve with lime wedges.

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 1 of 8 servings
Calories 557
Total Fat 41 g
Saturated Fat 13 g
Carbohydrates 12 g
Dietary Fiber 3 g
Sugar 5 g
Protein 32 g
Cholesterol 129 mg
Sodium 837 mg

Reviews

Katherine Brewer
1/4 cup chili powder??? is that right? 

I added black beans, to thickening up. it was a bit watery.
Flavor is great.

Heather White
I made this for a potluck lunch at work and there was practically none left at end of day! People loved it. I would agree with the other comments that it was more soup/stew than chili. I also only used 2 cups of water, but added an extra half can of pumpkin to thicken up. I also added 2 jalapeños to kick up the spice. I omitted the greens and didn’t bother with the special sour cream, just had plain sour cream for topping. Overall I would recommend this recipe to make it your own!
Melissa Munoz
Awesome! Needs a little more depth so add more pumpkin. I could only find a 2 pound shoulder so next time I will use more pork for sure! I used an American lager because that’s what I had. This is a keeper for sure!
Angela Perez
This was excellent. I made minor changes. I used an American Brown Ale instead of a Mexican Lager, I added 1.5 cans pumpkin and 4 chipotle peppers, which put it right at the edge of edibility for my 12 and 14 year olds. I skipped the sour cream topping since I knew no one would touch it. This is in our keeper file.
Tara Baldwin
We look forward to making this recipe every fall! It is so good! We do it exactly as the recipe says and love it every time.
David White
This recipe was better than we expected. My husband loved it. We did doctor it up by adding cumin and nutmeg and ancho chile powder. We also replaced the poblano peppers with zucchini (what we had on hand). It turned out great. We could take or leave the sour cream topping but the flavor of the chili is great.
Emily Johnson
I was disappointed in this recipe because I thought it had a “muddy” taste w/ the canned pumpkin. I think it would have been better w/ chunks of pumpkin or butternut squash.
Blake Brock
This recipe is awesomely delicious! The beer makes the pork super tender – yummy and very flavorful!
Sarah Yang
I followed this recipe to the T and it came out perfectly the first try! The meat is soo tender and juicy. All the flavors of the ingredients really come together and make a delicious, unique chili. My boyfriend and his friend were very impressed! One of my new favorite recipes, and absolutely perfect for autumn.
Heather Clayton
This chili recipe fell pretty short for me. I ended up adjusting it as many did (I added some sweet corn and black beans to the recipe, as well as additional pumpkin and some sour cream and used tenderloin instead of shoulder but it was still missing something. The texture, combined with the beer-flavored pork, was what really killed it for me. The watered down pumpkin has the consistency of baby food, and when I got pieces of pork they sort of had a beer juice thing going on when I bit down on them. The baby food/beer juice combo was relatively terrible. Not to mention the smell that was the pork and beer cooking – pretty nasty. My husband liked it more than I did and ate it for two nights but I only managed about 3/4 of a bowl and we pitched the rest. I’m pretty unhappy that I didn’t end up liking this recipe since I was excited to make it after reading a lot of the reviews, but it just didn’t work for me.

 

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