Low Fat Shepherds Pie Recipe

Shepherds pie to me is proper comfort food for me, perfect for a cold winter’s night. Shepherd’s Pie is also known as Cottage Pie and I do believe it originated from either Scotland or the North of England. I decided to make this dish for an evening after work, I have gone for a low fat option and is mostly suitable for anyone following the Slimming World diet – you may just need to miss out the grated cheese.

Traditionally Shepherd’s pie is packed full of minced beef, along with carrots, celery and onion. It is then topped with mash potato, however with this recipe I have combined mash potato with mash swede which tastes amazing!

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How To Make Low Fat Shepherd’s Pie

The first thing that needs to be done is to make the topping as it can take some time for the swede and potato to become soft enough to mash. Both the potatoes and swede needs to be peeled and cut into smaller pieces, both wanted to then be placed into separate saucepans of boiling water.

I then put some fry light into a large saucepan, fry light is important if you are going for the low fat option. You may need to add a few additional sprays as you cook to ensure the ingredients don’t burn. The onions need to be added and cooked until they are soft, this may take 10 minutes or so. I also added a few bits of chopped garlic, to give it that extra bite.

Once soft you want to add in the mince beef, carrots and celery. This needs to be stirred often until the beef is cooked. Many recipes now add beef stock however I like to add a tin of chopped tomatoes as I think it adds some extra taste and flavour.

As well as the tinned tomato, I also like to add a couple tablespoons of tomato puree. Stir all of this together to ensure that its all fully mixed. The potato and swede should be ready now, empty out the water and mash them. Mix the two together so that you have a nice mixture of potato and swede.

I then placed the Shepherd’s pie mixture into the dish and then poured the potato and swede on top. With a metal spoon I spread the mash across so that all of the beef mixture was covered.

Other recipes will normally recommend adding egg to the mash to help brown and crisp it, I like to use grated cheese. Pour all the grated cheese over the top and then spread this to again ensure all of the mash is fully covered.

This will normally take around 20 minutes to cook, continue cooking until the cheese on the top is cooked and the edges are bubbling.

I had the Shepherd’s pie combined with peas and mixed vegetables along with some homemade garlic bread….Yummy!! If you do make this, i’d love to know what you thought about it or what you would have changed 🙂