Sweet potato chili is the ultimate comfort food. This hearty recipe is packed full of hearty vegetables, legumes, and delicious seasonings. It comes together in under an hour, perfect for a busy weeknight. Plus, it tastes even better the next day and makes the best, easy lunch.
There’s truly nothing better than a big bowl of warm chili on a cold fall or winter night. When the crisp air makes it difficult to warm up, a hot meal is ideal. Not to mention, it’ll make your home smell like a dream as it simmers away on the stovetop.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll certainly be making chili and soup to enjoy all throughout the cold months!
Thankfully, I’ve got a lot of recipes to get you through the season. Be sure to check out my Classic Chili Recipe, Slow Cooker Chicken Chili, Butternut Squash Chili, Healthy Meatball Soup or this classic Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe.
Ingredients
- Extra virgin olive oil — Avocado oil is another good option.
- Veggies — Onion, red bell pepper, celery, carrots, and fresh garlic.
- Protein — I normally use lean ground beef, but ground turkey or chicken also works well in this recipe.
- Sweet potatoes — Naturally sweet potatoes pair perfectly with savory spices and veggies. Cut them into one-inch cubes.
- Tomato — Canned, diced tomatoes with juices, and a cup of tomato sauce.
- Beef broth — Vegetable or chicken broth can be substituted in a pinch.
- Seasonings — Red pepper flakes, ground cumin, smoked paprika, ground coriander, salt, and black pepper. If you like a spicy chili, you can also add chili powder, ground chipotle, or adobo sauce.
- Black beans — Drained and rinsed.
- Chopped Fresh Cilantro — Optional for garnish, you can also include some chopped green onion and/or tortilla chips! And don’t forget to squeeze a little bit of lime juice before serving.
Instructions
Prep work:
- Start by dicing the onion, bell pepper, celery, and carrots into small pieces.
- Finely mince 2 fresh cloves of garlic.
- Peel and dice the sweet potato into small, even cubes.
- Drain and rinse your can of black beans.
Sauté veggies and meat:
- Measure olive oil into a large pot on the stovetop and turn the heat to medium-high. Add diced veggies and sauté for about 3 minutes, until the onion softens and starts to become translucent.
- Add minced garlic and sauté 30 seconds longer.
- Add ground beef and break it apart with a spoon while it browns.
Add remaining ingredients:
- Once the beef is fully browned, add all other ingredients (except for black beans) and stir until well combined.
- Turn the heat to high until the mixture begins to boil. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer for about 15 minutes, until potatoes are tender.
Add beans:
- Last, add drained and rinsed black beans to the pot. Stir well and let the beans warm through, this will take about 5 minutes.
Serve:
- Finally, garnish chili with chopped cilantro and green onions, if desired.
- Ladle into serving bowls and enjoy!
Recipe Tips
- When you dice up your sweet potatoes, try your best to cut them into small, even sized pieces. This will help with quick, uniform cooking.
- If you’re feeling adventurous, you can play around with the ingredients in this flexible sweet potato black bean chili! Try kidney or pinto beans instead of black beans or substitute a different color bell pepper. You can also add other veggies like zucchini or chopped cauliflower.
- If you like spicy food, you can add some more heat to this recipe with a freshly diced jalapeno, extra red pepper flakes or a pinch of cayenne pepper.
Serve Your Chili With
Sweet Potato Chili
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 cup diced onions
- 1 cup red bell pepper seeded and diced
- 1/2 cup diced celery
- 1 cup diced carrots
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 1 lb extra-lean ground beef
- 2 cups sweet potato diced
- 1 cup (10 oz) diced tomatoes undrained
- 1 cup tomato sauce
- 2 cups beef broth
- 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- Salt and pepper
- 1 can (19 oz/540 ml) black beans drained and rinsed
- Chopped fresh cilantro for garnishing
Instructions
- Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.
- Add onion, bell pepper, celery, carrot and sauté for 3 minutes, then add garlic and sauté for 30 seconds longer.
- Add ground beef and cook, breaking up the beef with a wooden spoon, until the beef is cooked through, about 5 minutes.
- Add sweet potato, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, beef broth, red pepper flakes, cumin, paprika, coriander, salt, and pepper to taste.
- Stir mixture, bring to a boil and then reduce the heat to low. Cover the pot with a lid and cook for about 15 mins or until the sweet potato is tender.
- Add black beans and allow to heat all the way through, about 5 minutes.
- Before serving, top with green onions.
Notes
- To store: To store leftovers, transfer the chili to an airtight container and keep refrigerated for up to 4 days.
- To reheat: You can reheat chili in the microwave or stovetop.
- To freeze: Freeze chili in a freezer-safe container for up to 3 months.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Did You Make This?
Follow @primaverakitchen on Instagram, snap a photo, and tag it #primaverakitchen. We’d love to see your recreation.
I wish I planned more slow cooker meals for these snow days I’m stuck working at home! This would have been perfect!
I LOVE sweet potato chili! This looks so warm and cozy!
I love chili! And love making it the slow cooker. I think I make it at least twice a month. During the Fall I make a Pumpkin Chili, but never made a Sweet Potato one before. Will try it next time chili is in the menu!! Thank you for the delicious recipe, my friend.
I just bought a huge bag of sweet potatoes at Costco (like, 20 pounds), and am now putting sweet potatoes in everything! I can’t wait to make this chili!
This looks so comforting and delicious! Chili is our faovrite especially when it’s been so cold out lately. Love the sweet potatoes and turkey in here!
Simple and delicious!
I don’t use sweet potatoes as much as I should. This slow cooker chili looks fabulous!! So healthy…
What a gorgeous chili, Olivia! Love the sweet potatoes in here. Sounds delish!
I’ve been making chili at least once every other week this winter! This version looks delicious with the sweet potato – one of my very favorites!
Hi Olivia, the other Olivia (from Olivia’s cuisine) told me about you. What a beautiful work you are doing here. Nice to see another ‘Ribas’ doing food blog. This sweet potato chilli seems scrumptious, it is now on my to do list!! Beijos Georgina
Perfect dish for a cold winter evening. It’s so colorful it brings happiness at home on rainy days!
1) I love slow cooker meals
2) I love… LOVE chili
3) Sweet potatoes rock my socks
In conclusion… gimme this chili! Bookmarking so I remember to make this!
Sounds like something I will really enjoy. I wish that this and all of the other recipes listed the nutritional values.
This is so warm and hearty! We love it here! Do you think it would freeze well?
yes for sure!
Made this last night, and WOW it is delicious! I have enough chili to last me a full week of cold, rainy days. Thank you!
You are so welcome, Vivian 😉 I am glad you enjoyed this recipe!
Well, this recipe looks good, but enough kudos for the chef! Did anyone actually make this dish, and have some constructive criticsm or suggestions in order to improve it?
Sorry, that came off a little coarse. It’s a good looking recipe, and inspired me to buy some ingredients I don’t usually use. I’ll let everyone know how it goes!
This dish came out very nicely. A few notes: 1) it doesn’t seem necessary to mix the ingredients after tossing them into the slow cooker one by one. 2) I’d recommend tasting whole cumin and coriander before finding/adding to the browning step (not the slow cooker step) 3) I used chunky canned tomatoes instead of tomato sauce.
I’m gonna try this again today and substitute beef for turkey, and toss in some chipotle for a kick.
Thanks, and happy cooking!
Brandon, thanks for your notes. Chunky canned tomatoes is a great replace for tomato sauce. I made this recipe one time with chunky tomatoes and it worked well. Let me know how this recipe will taste with beef instead.
just wondering Brandon how this recipe turned out using beef instead of turkey??
Hi Wanda! I’m happy to report that it turned out quite well. The beef tended to retain more of the juices that stewed along with it after browning. When I attempted the recipe with lean turkey, the meat stayed dry even after cooking with all of the other ingredients for 8 hours. It was still good, but the texture was a little inconsistent to my liking. If you’d like to experiment, perhaps you can try doing a 50/50 mix of beef/turkey- I’ll bet it’d be pretty tasty! Lets us know 🙂
Brendon ? please shut up arguing with yourself. This chilli was great considering how easy it is to make, thanks for the recipe.
Use the leftovers for nachos, add guacamole, tortilla chips and sour cream. Amazing.
*brandon.
Thanks for the clarification, Scott.
As I said earlier, I felt like my initial comment came off with a little too much cynicism than was intended. This was mostly because I felt like others were just commenting on the photos and not the recipe itself. It tends to be a common trend these days- there are more cooking shows on than ever before, yet we have this historically low number of people actually doing the cooking! One can find evidence of this fact in the comments section of a simple recipe online, for example. With this in mind, I give you credit for putting the dish together.
That being said, Scott- I’d recommend refraining from any meager attempts to offend those who are having a constructive discussion about an art form such as cooking. If you choose not to follow that advice, of course that’s no skin off my back. After all, I apologized for any miscommunication some 8 months ago. However, if you do choose to troll, perhaps you could redeem yourself by exercising some originality when offering an adaptation of the given recipe so that it could present a boon to all who see the conversation. Perhaps, even, something beyond the fascinating and ingenious personal discovery you had when you made nachos.
In short, it appears you have some lessons to learn in and out of the kitchen. Good luck.
May I ask what kind of ground turkey you used? Was it packaged ground turkey? I never have good luck with ground turkey or chicken. Thank you!
It was packaged ground Turkey, Stephanie.
It’s truly very complex in this busy life to listen news on Television, so I
only use the web for that reason, and get the most recent information.
My daughter and I both loved this chili! Absolutely delicious flavor! Only issue I had was it took longer to cook as my crock pot is a 6 qt one so I had to turn up the heat and cook for a few more hours before the sweet potatoes were cooked, as it was only half full. Also recipe doesn’t say when to add the bell pepper so I added them in step two, with the onion and garlic.
I made this tonight, substituting green peppers for the red because I forgot to buy red. It was FABULOUS! My whole family ate it and loved it!!
That’s awesome! I am so glad to hear that.Thanks for stopping by and giving me your feedback 😉