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Slow Cooker Beef and Sweet Potato Chili
The sweet potato goes in halfway through, which is the whole difference between distinct cubes and orange mush.
- Prep
- 20 minutes
- Cook
- 5 hours 30 minutes (3 hours, then 2 1/2 more after the sweet potato)
- Total
- 5 hours 50 minutes
- Yield
- 6 servings
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Two things go wrong with slow cooker chili, and they are opposite failures. The first is greasy, flat-tasting meat, which happens when ground beef is tipped in raw — it poaches into grey pellets and its fat never renders out, so it floats. The second is that the sweet potato disappears. Cubed and added at the start, it spends eight hours in acidic liquid and breaks down completely, thickening the pot into something the color of baby food.
The fix for the meat is ten minutes in a skillet before it goes anywhere near the crock. Brown it hard in two batches so it sears instead of steaming, drain off the fat, then use the same pan to fry the tomato paste and spices in the residue — thirty seconds until they smell toasted rather than dusty. This is where chili gets its depth, and it cannot be recovered later. Deglaze with a little broth and scrape every bit into the cooker. The fix for the sweet potato is simply arithmetic: it needs about two and a half hours on LOW, not eight, so it goes in at the halfway mark and comes out holding its shape.
The pot needs sixty to ninety minutes of resting before it tastes finished, so if you can make it a day ahead, do. It thickens overnight and the chipotle settles from a sharp edge into background warmth. Four days refrigerated, three months frozen, and it reheats better than most things — add a splash of broth, since the sweet potato keeps drinking the liquid.
What you need
Ingredients
Measurements
Metric converts only measures that are mathematically safe. Density-dependent cups stay as Nicole wrote them.
Scale the batch
6 servings
Browned first
- 2 pounds ground beef, 85% lean
- 1 tablespoon neutral oil
- 1 large yellow onion, diced
- 1 red bell pepper, diced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 tablespoons tomato paste
- 2 tablespoons chili powder
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 1/2 teaspoons smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
Into the crock
- One 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
- 1 cup low-sodium beef broth
- 1 to 2 chipotle peppers in adobo, minced, plus 1 teaspoon of the sauce
- Two 15-ounce cans black beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes (about 2 medium), peeled and cut into 3/4-inch cubes
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar or lime juice
- Sour cream, cilantro and sliced scallion, to serve
How it goes
Method
Read the whole thing once before you start. Nothing here is difficult, but the timing is unforgiving at the end.
Brown the beef in two batches
Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high. Add half the beef in a single layer and leave it undisturbed for 3 to 4 minutes before breaking it up, then cook until deeply browned. Repeat with the second half. Crowding the pan is the single most common error here — the meat releases water, the temperature drops, and you get grey crumbles with none of the roasted flavor that carries the finished chili.
Bloom the spices in the pan drippings
Drain off all but about a tablespoon of fat, return the pan to medium heat and cook the onion and bell pepper 5 minutes until softened. Add the garlic, tomato paste, chili powder, cumin, paprika, oregano and salt and stir constantly for 60 to 90 seconds, until the paste darkens to brick and the spices smell toasted rather than raw. Dry spices tipped straight into a slow cooker taste chalky no matter how long they simmer.
Deglaze and transfer everything
Pour in about half the broth and scrape the pan hard with a wooden spoon until the browned residue lifts. Tip the whole lot — beef, vegetables, deglazing liquid — into a 6-quart slow cooker, then add the crushed tomatoes, the remaining broth, and the chipotle with its adobo. Stir once to combine. Cover and cook on LOW for 3 hours or HIGH for 1 1/2.
Add the sweet potato at the halfway point
Stir in the cubed sweet potato and the drained black beans. Cover and continue on LOW for a further 2 1/2 to 3 hours, until a cube gives easily to a fork but still holds a clean edge. This staggered timing is the whole point of the recipe: sweet potato added at the start dissolves into the sauce, and while that thickens the pot, it also means there is no sweet potato left to eat.
Finish with acid, then rest
Stir in the vinegar or lime juice and taste for salt — tomatoes and beans both flatten seasoning and it will almost certainly need more. Then leave it off the heat, lid on, for at least 30 minutes before serving. Chili tastes noticeably sharper straight from the cooker; the rest lets the chipotle and cumin settle together.
Serve with something cold and sharp
Ladle into bowls and top with sour cream, chopped cilantro and sliced scallion. The cold dairy against the smoky heat is not decoration — it resets the palate between spoonfuls and is the difference between a bowl you finish and one you put down.
On the bench
Equipment
2 of these change the result. The rest are conveniences, with a workaround given. Nothing here is a brand recommendation — the spec is what matters.
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6-quart slow cooker
This is a full pot — two pounds of beef, two cans of beans and a pound and a half of sweet potato. Anything smaller than 6 quarts will be filled past the two-thirds mark, where slow cookers heat unevenly.
- What matters
- 6 quarts or larger, with a LOW/HIGH switch.
- Search for
- “6 quart slow cooker” (paid link)
Large heavy skillet
Browning two pounds of beef properly needs a pan that holds its heat when cold meat hits it. Cast iron or heavy stainless both work; nonstick will not brown as well.
- What matters
- 12 inches, cast iron or thick-based stainless.
- Search for
- “12 inch cast iron skillet” (paid link)
Y-peeler
OptionalA pound and a half of sweet potato is a tedious peel with a straight peeler and quick with a Y-shaped one, which matters when this is the longest part of the prep.
- What matters
- Any Y-shaped peeler with a carbon or stainless blade.
- If you skip it
- A straight swivel peeler or a small sharp knife does it, just add five minutes to the prep.
- Search for
- “y peeler vegetable” (paid link)
The list
What to buy
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Cook's notes
What we would tell a friend
- Ground turkey or chicken substitutes directly, but add an extra tablespoon of oil for browning and expect a lighter result — you may want the second chipotle to compensate.
- The mistake to avoid is adding the sweet potato at the start with everything else. It will be gone by the end, and while the sauce thickens, the dish loses its whole point.
- One chipotle gives a warm background heat; two is assertive. The adobo sauce carries as much smoke as the pepper, so add it even if you use only one.
- To make it vegetarian, replace the beef with 1 1/2 pounds cremini mushrooms, pulsed coarse in a food processor and browned the same way in two batches — they need the hard sear even more than the beef does.
- For extra heat, add a pinch or two of cayenne pepper when you bloom the spices.
From the kitchen
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