Slow Cooker Beef And Pumpkin Stew

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Delicious slow cooker beef and pumpkin stew. Loaded with beef, fresh pumpkin, parsnips and carrots, this pumpkin stew is perfect for the cold winter months and for using up leftover pumpkin.

This pumpkin stew recipe is also a fantastic healthy fall recipe. It is loaded with beef and vegetables and perfect for paleo or the whole30.

This beef and pumpkin stew recipe is an updated recipe. Originally shared back in 2016, updated in 2020, and updated again for you today.

Beef And Pumpkin Stew

This beef and pumpkin stew came about (back in 2016) because I was on a round of the Whole30 and wanted something different than just air fryer pumpkin for dinner.

I lived in Portugal then and was rather limited on ingredients. The parsnips looked past it (but where the best I could get) and the beef was the best I could find. Yet Portugal excelled with its AMAZING pumpkin.

It soon became my go to and I would also transform it with more stock and tomatoes into a beef and pumpkin soup sometimes too.

Fast forward a few years and living back in the UK and I am now able to get all the best ingredients and really transform this beef and pumpkin stew.

It has also become my go to for using up pumpkin and dumping all the ingredients into the slow cooker.

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What Meat Goes With Pumpkin?

The best meat to cook with pumpkin is beef. You can add pumpkin to stews, stroganoffs or serve it alongside your air fryer sirloin steak. It really does go well together.

Can You Make A Vegetarian Pumpkin Stew?

Yes, you can. You can load it up with more vegetables, add in chickpeas or just swap out the beef for some quorn. Or follow our slow cooker vegetable stew for inspiration.

Can You Cook Beef Stew With Pumpkin?

Yes, you certainly can make beef stew with pumpkin, and it is delicious. But remember that pumpkin is fast cooking and beef is slow cooking. If you dumped everything into the slow cooker at once, you will end up with pumpkin mush.

What I recommend instead that you add pumpkin to your stew later and then your stew ingredients will be cooked correctly.  

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Pumpkin Beef Stew Ingredients

Pumpkin – You will want loads of cubed pumpkin. The lovely hubby always peels and cubes a whole pumpkin when we buy one and then we have a good batch of it to use in a variety of pumpkin recipes.

Veggies – I also recommend adding in some other veggies too. We used parsnips and carrots.

Beef – Any diced beef will do the trick. I usually look for a deal on diced pumpkin and then bulk buy it for later and then freeze it. Then when I want to make a slow cooker beef stew, I will defrost overnight.

Onion – I also recommend adding an onion. You can peel and dice the onion and then sauté it with extra virgin olive oil to flavour your slow cooker first, or skip the sauté step.

Garlic – Your pumpkin stew tastes better because of the garlic. You don’t have to use fresh garlic though you can cheat. Swap fresh garlic for garlic puree, chopped frozen garlic, or garlic seasoning. We went with Morrison’s frozen chopped garlic and it’s a life saver for quick prep.

Stock – I also recommend using our instant pot veggie stock or some beef stock. It’s such a great way to add stock to your soups and stews and it freezes perfectly. Though you can of course use any veggie stock and you will need 300ml.

Seasoning – Then for seasoning for your beef and pumpkin stew I recommend salt, pepper, sweet paprika, thyme and parsley.

Then for the kitchen gadgets that we have used in this recipe for pumpkin stew it has just been our Crockpot Slow Cooker. We have this one and its wonderful for many types of slow cooker recipes and also great for homemade stews.  

Plus, we recommend you head over to our slow cooker recipes category as we have more than 100 tried and tested slow cooker recipes and have been using slow cookers for 18 years.

How To Make Beef Stew With Pumpkin?

• Peel. If you haven’t done so already, peel and dice loads of pumpkin. We used 400g of pumpkin in our stew.
• Optional. I like to sauté my onion first in my slow cooker with some extra virgin olive oil. This is optional and can just be dumped in with the other ingredients. I then love to add in the garlic too and then brown the meat.
• Dump. Add to the slow cooker everything but the pumpkin and seasonings.  
• Cook. Slow cook on high for 2 hours or on low for 3 hours.
• Add. Then add the pumpkin and seasonings and mix well. The frozen stock cube will have defrosted now and will mix in easily.
• Cook. Then cook for a further 1 hour on high or 1.5 hours on low.
• Serve. Stir and then serve.

And I am sure you can see why crockpot pumpkin stew is a true favourite of mine.

How Can I Make My Beef Stew More Flavoursome?

The best way to make beef stew more flavoursome is to always use your own homemade stock. It makes such a difference to make your own compared to shop bought or using OXO cubes.

I don’t always have spare beef stock and that is okay as you can sub it for vegetable stock, you can also make instant pot chicken stock, instant pot turkey stock or even instant pot lamb stock.

More Slow Cooker Stew Recipes

As we just love stew in the slow cooker, below are a few more slow cooker stew recipes that we recommend that you try, and of course its easy to mix and match ingredients to fit in with what ingredients you have in.

• Slow Cooker Irish Lamb Stew
• Slow Cooker Corned Beef Stew
• Slow Cooker Lamb Stew & Dumplings
• Slow Cooker Beef Bourguignon
• Slow Cooker Venison Stew
• Slow Cooker Turkish Bean Stew

What Else To Make With Leftover Pumpkin?

There are also a lot of other things you can make with leftover pumpkin beyond our pumpkin beef stew.

For example, we love to cook air fryer cubed pumpkin for a delicious side dish, cook instant pot pumpkin puree and freeze for later, make air fryer pumpkin muffins or best of all soup maker pumpkin soup.  

Your beef pumpkin stew slow cooker recipe is below, note you can print it out with or without photos, adjust servings, or click between metric and imperial depending on where you are in the world.

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