Turkey Sweet Potato Chili (Video)
Turkey Sweet Potato Chili is amazing, and this no-bean chili recipe will be a winner for anyone who loves savory sweet potato recipes! See links in the post for some even lower-carb chili recipes.
PIN Turkey Sweet Potato Chili to try it later!
I never liked sweet potatoes until I became a food blogger and discovered savory sweet potato recipes. Now I love things like Spicy Sweet Potato Fries, Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes, and Sweet Potato Gratin. And even though they’re an occasional treat for me, I just have to have sweet potatoes occasionally in the fall.
And this Turkey Sweet Potato Chili came about when I was brainstorming recipe ideas with my niece Kara, and she mentioned seeing a recipe that used sweet potatoes in chili. We experimented with ingredients and loved the slightly-spicy no-bean turkey chili with sweet potatoes that we came up with.
Later I googled my proposed recipe title and realized there were quite a few recipes out there on the web for chili with sweet potatoes! But I think my version is 100% delicious and leaving out the beans makes this a lower-carb sweet potato chili; I really hope you will try it!
What ingredients do you need?
(This is only a list of ingredients; please scroll down for complete printable recipe. Or if you use the JUMP TO RECIPE link at the top of the page, it will take you directly to the complete recipe.)
- Olive Oil (affiliate link)
- ground turkey
- green pepper
- onion
- Minced Garlic (affiliate link)
- Spike Seasoning (affiliate link), or other all-purpose seasoning blend
- Chili Powder (affiliate link)
- ground Ancho Chiles (or use more regular chili powder if you don’t have Ancho)
- ground Cumin (affiliate link)
- canned diced green chiles (affiliate link), use Anaheim chiles, not Jalapenos
- canned petite diced tomatoes
- canned tomato sauce
- canned beef broth or homemade beef stock
- sweet potato
- Green Tabasco Sauce (affiliate link), or other green hot sauce
- salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
How can you make Turkey Sweet Potato Chili even lower in carbs?
This recipe calls for a large sweet potato, but use a less sweet potato if you want to make this recipe lower in carbs.
Can you use beef in the sweet potato chili recipe?
If you’re not such a fan of ground turkey just use ground beef for an equally delicious chili idea!
More chili recipes your family might like:
You can find lots of tasty chili recipes in my collection of Healthy Chili Recipes Your Family Will Love!
How to make Turkey Sweet Potato Chili:
(This is only a summary of the steps for the recipe; please scroll down for complete printable recipe. Or if you use the JUMP TO RECIPE link at the top of the page, it will take you directly to the complete recipe.)
- Brown the turkey and put in the soup pot.
- Then cook the chopped green pepper, chopped onion, and spices in the same pan.
- Put that mixture in the soup pot along with the petite diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, chicken stock, canned green chiles, and Green Tabasco.
- Start to simmer the chili on low while you chop up the sweet potato.
- Add sweet potato to the chili and simmer on low for an hour, adding a little water if it gets too thick.
- Season Turkey Sweet Potato Chili to taste with Green Tabasco Sauce (affiliate link), salt, and pepper; then serve hot and enjoy!
More ideas for No-Bean Chili:
Check out Amazing Low-Carb and Keto Chili Recipes if you want to see more no-bean chili recipes that are really low in carbs.
Weekend Food Prep:
This recipe has been added to a category called Weekend Food Prep to help you find recipes you can prep or cook on the weekend and eat during the week!
Turkey Sweet Potato Chili
This Turkey Sweet Potato Chili is amazing, and this will be a winner for anyone who loves savory sweet potato recipes!
Ingredients
- 1 T olive oil, divided
- 1 lb. lean ground turkey
- 1 small green pepper, seeds and stem removed and chopped
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 1 T minced garlic
- 1 T Spike Seasoning (optional, but recommended; see notes)
- 1 T chili powder
- 1 tsp. ground Ancho Chiles (or use more regular chili powder if you don’t have Ancho)
- 2 tsp. ground cumin
- two 4 oz. cans diced green chiles with juice (Anaheim chiles, not jalapenos)
- one 14.5 oz. can petite diced tomatoes
- one 8 oz. can tomato sauce
- 2 cups homemade beef stock (see notes)
- 1 large sweet potato, diced into cubes (see notes)
- 1 T Green Tabasco Sauce (or more, to taste)
- salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Instructions
- Heat 2 tsp. olive oil in a heavy frying pan, add ground turkey, and cook over medium-high heat until the turkey is well-browned and all liquid has evaporated. (I like to break it apart with an old-fashioned potato masher (affiliate link) as the meat cooks.)
- Put the browned turkey into a medium-sized soup pot.
- Add the other teaspoon of olive oil to the frying pan, add the chopped green pepper and chopped onion, and saute about 3-4 minutes over medium heat.
- Add the minced garlic, Spike Seasoning (affiliate link) if using, chili powder, Ancho chile powder, and ground cumin and cook 1-2 minutes.
- Add the pepper-onion-spices mixture to the soup pot, rinsing out the pan with a little water.
- Then add the diced green chiles with juice, petite diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and homemade beef or chicken stock to the soup pot and start to simmer the chili on low.
- While the chili simmers, peel the sweet potatoes and dice into pieces about 3/4 – 1 inches square.
- Add sweet potatoes to the chili and simmer about an hour, adding a little water if it gets too thick.
- Taste for seasoning and add Green Tabasco Sauce (affiliate link), salt, and fresh ground pepper to taste.
- Serve hot. This will keep in the fridge for about a week or can be frozen.
Notes
If you don’t have Spike Seasoning (affiliate link), substitute any all-purpose seasoning blend. Use beef or chicken broth from a can or carton if you don’t have homemade stock. You need about 1 lb. diced sweet potato cubes.
Recipe created by Kalyn and Kara.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
6Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 292Total Fat: 12gSaturated Fat: 3gUnsaturated Fat: 8gCholesterol: 79mgSodium: 1405mgCarbohydrates: 24gFiber: 5gSugar: 13gProtein: 25g
Nutrition information is automatically calculated by the Recipe Plug-In I am using. I am not a nutritionist and cannot guarantee 100% accuracy, since many variables affect those calculations.
Low-Carb Diet / Low-Glycemic Diet / South Beach Diet Suggestions:
This Turkey Sweet Potato Chili may be too high in carbs for traditional low-carb diet plans; check the nutritional information to see if this no-bean chili will work for you. If made with lean ground turkey, this chili recipe would be approved for phase 2 or 3 of the original South Beach Diet.
Find More Recipes Like This One:
Use Chili Recipes to find more recipes like this one. Use the Diet Type Index to find recipes suitable for a specific eating plan. You might also like to follow Kalyn’s Kitchen on Pinterest, on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, or on YouTube to see all the good recipes I’m sharing there.
Historical Notes for this Recipe:
This recipe was posted in 2015. It was last updated with more information in 2023.
28 Comments on “Turkey Sweet Potato Chili (Video)”
This was awesome! Whole family loved it.
Happy to hear that; so glad you enjoyed it!
I’ve made this and it is one of the best soup/chili/stew recipes.  Love the flavors all coming together so deliciously.  I am making it again today with the first snowfall.  This freezes nicely too.
So glad you are enjoying it!
This has been one of my go-to recipes for years! Do you know how I might be able to make this in the Instant Pot?
I wish I was more experienced with the Instant Pot, but without trying it I couldn’t really tell you. I know you can brown the meat in the IP, push it over and cook the pepper and onion. But I really don’t know about the timing under pressure. I’m guessing it would be really quick because sweet potatoes wouldn’t take much time. And you would need less stock too, but without trying it I am not sure just what the right amount would be. If you experiment I’d love to hear how it works!
What a simple but brilliant idea!! Thank you so much for the inspo! I have pinned the recipe so I can make it soon! x
Thanks, glad you like it!
I wasn’t sure about this one, but it was really tasty! Both hubby and I enjoyed!
So glad to hear that; thanks for telling me!
This was absolutely delicious. I'm a good recipe reader and was eyeing another. I thought, no, I gotta try this one. So glad I did! I don't think I'll ever look at another one again. Thank you, thank you!!
So glad you liked it!
how much is a serving? 1 cup?
One reason I don't want to try to calculate nutritional information is I'm not really sure how much the average person will eat, and I am certainly not trying to tell people how much of something they should eat. In estimating this to be about six servings, I don't measure out the servings, but I'd say it's probably slightly more than a cup.
I made this before on the stove and it was amazing! Do you think i can make this in a slow cooker?
I'm sure it will work in the slow cooker, although I have done it that way so I can't give you an exact recipe. I would definitely reduce the amount of beef stock, maybe by about half. I might use a little more sweet potato for the slow cooker too.
Hey, so I know this post is old, but I LOVE your napkins. Where are they from?
Adrienne, I am pretty sure they were from Williams-Sonoma. I have the same one with kind of yellow-green with the gray.
Tried this recipe tonight. It was delicious. Even my boyfriend, who has liked very few of the paleo recipes I've tried and doesn't like chili at all, LOVED it and went for seconds! I made slight modifications. Ground lamb instead of Turkey, added parsnips during the simmer stage, and baby spinach at the end just until withered. It was so yummy and there's plenty leftovers to carry for work lunches!
Glad you liked it. I like the idea of lamb in this.
Thanks for the very kind feedback Rick, so glad you enjoyed it!
This was fantastic and I say that as someone who makes a lot of different chili recipes. I think this will become my new go-to chili recipe. The only thing I did differently was I added a splash of liquid smoke and some hickory-smoked sea salt, which added just a little more depth. But thank you so much…this is a keeper!
This was fantastic! I did modify slightly I am incapable of following a recipe, it seems) to cut down the heat (husband is highly intolerable of spiciness). Then I used it for the chili part of I Breath I'm Hungry's Cheesy Chili Spaghetti Squash (http://www.ibreatheimhungry.com/2013/12/cheesy-chili-spaghetti-squash-casserole-low-carb-gluten-free.html), and that took it to new levels of wonderful. Thanks for a great recipe!
I'm incapable of following a recipe as well! Fun hearing how you adapted it.
I love sweet potatoes and I definitely love this chili!
Thanks Medeja; hope you enjoy!
I love using sweet potatoes in chili, especially when there's a spicy kick to it! I've never been a fan of the sweet recipes that use brown sugar or maple syrup — or marshmallows.
Lydia, I am 100% in agreement with you on that!