It’s allways difficult to know what to call this dish. Should it be cottage pie, shepherdess pie, or vegan shepherd’s pie? Either way, it’s a delicious winter style comfort food. Who says the English have no national dishes? This one is a classic.
The original essence of the dish was a meat based layer covered with mashed potato and baked in the oven. That’s simple enough I know – but this vegan version is massively better. It’s better taste-wise, environment-wise, health-wise and cruelty-wise! That’s because I use my delicious meat sauce replacement, using lentils, blitzed mushrooms, veggie mince, onions & spices. I also add in some tomatoes, grated carrot, and garlic to make it a super tasty, nutritious & filling. This same savoury sauce can be used in moussaka, pastitsio, lasagne, wraps, & nachos to name a few….!
I think it’s important to make sure that the savoury sauce is nice and wet, almost, but not quite sloppy. When you bake it, the dish will dry out a little, and the liquid will be absorbed. So you need to adjust it in advance to be moist enough. It tastes much better if the final dish is very moist. The same is true of the mashed potato, it wants to be very wet almost to the point of sloppiness. This is so that when it’s cooked the consistency is very soft and creamy & not at all pasty. I like to add margarine, and quite a lot of soya milk, plus mustard, and veg stock to the potato. I then give it a really good mashing by hand to make it super smooth and tasty.
A mistake is having too much of the sauce on the bottom relative to the mashed potato on top. Roughly 50/50 is about right – maybe just a little more sauce, or a little more mash but not by much.
Smoothing out the sauce/mince layer is easy, but dolloping on the mashed potato in spoonfuls can be tricky. Using two spoons is a good technique. You can use one spoon to pick up some mash and the other to deposit it on the sauce. Afterwards you can spread it out evenly with a fork.
Lastly finishing this vegan shepherd’s pie with grated vegan cheese, wholemeal breadcrumbs and a few spices really does the trick.
Vegan Shepherds Pie
Equipment
- 1 oven proof dish 16cm by 27cm approx - pyrex, stainless steel or ceramic is fine.
- 2 smaller oven proof dishes 19cm by 13cm as an alternative to one large one.
- 1 potato masher can use a fork, but a masher is much better
- 1 Food processor you could chop the mushrooms very finely, but a food processor is best
Ingredients
The mashed potato to go on the top.
- 1.1 kg potatoes suitable for mashing you could get away with 1kg, but the potato layer might be a bit thin.
- 40 g vegan margarine
- 20 5 dijon mustard
- 300 g unsweetened soya milk adjust to get the right level of sloppiness
- 10 5 low salt veg stock powder
The sauce to go on the bottom.
- 250 g vegan mince – plant pioneers, Linda McCartney or similar If you don't like using mince just add more mushrooms and lentils to make up for it.
- 300 g 1 large onions
- 150 g grated carrot
- 30 g garlic I love garlic - you can use 50g if you like it too!
- 250 g chestnut mushrooms - 1 punnet
- 250 g 1 cans of brown, red, or green whole lentils already cooked. or frozen home cooked ones
- 400 g can of chopped tomatoes
- 100 g of tomato puree approximately half a tube
- 2 heaped tablespoons of yeast flakes
- 2 flat tablespoons of stock powder
- 1 tbsps. of smoked paprika
- 1 heaped tbsps. of oregano
- 1 teasp Yeast extract?
- 1 tablespoons of soya sauce – the naturally brewed sort.
Instructions
Making the savoury mince sauce for the bottom
- Finely chop the onions and begin sautéing.
- Add in the garlic chopped or crushed – crushing is definitely easier.
- Meanwhile wash and pulse blitz the mushrooms so they are in fairly small pieces.
- As the onions soften and begin to brown, add in the mushrooms, grated carrot and oregano.
- Continue sautéing until the mushrooms are browning too.
- Cook the veggie mince according to the instructions – I generally use my Actifry for this.
- Add the cooked mince to the other ingredients, and add in the chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, paprika, stock powder, yeast flakes and soya sauce.
- Cook off for 15 minutes or so, until the veggies and mince are well incorporated.
- Finally add in the pre-cooked lentils, stir briefly – then take off the heat.
- adjust the liquid content so that it's fairly sloppy, but not overly so.
Making the mashed potato topping
- Scrub the potatoes and remove any bad bits. I never peel potatoes - it's unnecessary - and the roughage is good for you.
- Cut into fairly small pieces so they cook quickly in the steamer.
- Put on a steamer for around 25 minutes - they want to be well cooked and easy to mash to a smooth consistency. Check they're soft.
- Then remove from the pan, pour away the water and tip them back into the same pan for mashing. This saves on washing up. Add in the various extra seasonings, margarine, soya milk, mustard etc and carefully at first (so it doesn't splash) start mashing the potato until you have a nice smooth puree.
- Mash the potatoes well adding extra milk if needed to get an almost sloppy consistency.
Assembling the Shepherd's Pie
- Then add the savoury sauce mix to a pyrex dish and smooth the sauce into a flat layer. I used a 16cm by 27cm pyrex dish, or 2 dishes 19cm by 13cm but anything similar is fine. Use 365g - 400g per small dish or 730g - 800g for the larger size.
- Gently add spoonfuls of the prepared mashed potato on top of the sauce layer, so as not to disturb the sauce.
- continue until the surface is completely covered
- Carefully, smooth it out with a fork into a nice even layer. You want a roughly 50/50 ratio sauce to potato with slightly more mashed potato if anything.
- Sprinkle the grated vegan cheese on top of the mashed potato,
- Add some wholemeal breadcrumbs, and whatever herbs and spices you fancy. I like a bit of cajun spice or BBQ seasoning.
- Cook in the oven for around 35 to 40 minutes. Check it's hot in the middle, and nicely browned on top before serving.
One Response
What a classic comfort food.
When I used to eat meat, I would find that I didn’t want to move after eating it. This veganized version, feels light and nutritious. What’s not to like? It’s one of my favourite dishes to make. I always make 2 and I freeze one so I can cook it when I too busy to prepare it!
Thank you