Twelve Months of Healthy Eating: Pumpkin Kale Chili in the Crockpot

Brrr!  We’re having a snow day here.  There’s really nothing better than a crockpot full of chili on a cold, snowy day!

Last month I shared this post with you about my calendar project.  I brought a calendar home from my favorite little grocery store in Key West and am re-making each month’s featured recipe to fit my dietary style.

This month the calendar features Turkey Pumpkin Chili.

This didn’t require a lot of modifications on my part.  I really could have just subbed tempeh for the turkey.  But that would have been too easy.  I’ve upped the phytonutrient content in addition to subbing out the meat.  I knew you were over there googling “chili high in phytronutrients,”  right?  To do that, I added a bunch of kale.  If you have picky eaters in your house, you can chop the kale up into teeny tiny pieces or even chop it until it’s almost a puree in your food processor.  We’re big kale fans here, so we just give it a rough chop.

A quick note about the tempeh:  beyond making sure it is gluten-free (not all are, some contain barley, read the labels carefully as always), it is a very forgiving protein, super easy to work with.  You may choose to grate it on the large side of a box grater so that it is crumbled like ground meat, you can cut it into cubes or break it by hand into pieces.  I broke it into pieces by hand in the batch pictured here.  I used a variety that contains flax seeds, but any gluten-free variety is fine.

Print

Pumpkin Kale Chili in the Crockpot

Author Johnna

Ingredients

• 1 medium yellow onion , chopped
• 3 garlic cloves , minced
• 1 package tempeh , gluten-free
• 1 bunch , 6 to 8 stems, kale (remove from stems, chopped to desired size)
• 4 cups vegetable broth , gluten-free
• 1 (15 oz.) can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin puree
• 1 (14.5 oz.) can diced tomatoes with chiles
• 1 T . chili powder
• 2 t . ground cumin
• 1/2 t . salt
• 1/2 t . black pepper

Instructions

1. Heat a large sauce pan until droplets of water poured into the pan will sizzle and dash across the pan. Once the pan is that warm, add 2 Tablespoons of water, the chopped onion and garlic. (This is water sauteing.)
2. Once onions are transparent, add tempeh. Cook, stirring occasionally, to brown the tempeh just a bit. Add kale, cooking until kale has softened a bit.
3. Add this mixture and all remaining ingredients to crockpot. Cook on low for 7-8 hours or on high for 4-5 hours.