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Recipes
BritishMeat & fishhigh proteinmeal prepcomfort

Lighter Cottage Pie

Lean beef and a pile of veg in a rich, savoury gravy under a fluffy potato-and-cauliflower mash. All the Sunday comfort at 38 g protein and half the fat of the classic.

Prep
20 min
Cook
50 min
Serves
4
Level
medium
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Cottage pie in an individual dish with peas, carrots, broccoli and red cabbage on a pub plate

Photo: Acabashi, cropped · CC BY-SA 4.0

Method

  1. 1

    Heat the oil in a large pan and brown the mince over high heat, breaking it up, until no pink remains.

    6 min
  2. 2

    Add onion, carrots, celery, mushrooms and garlic and soften. Stir in the tomato purée and thyme for a minute.

    8 min
  3. 3

    Pour in the stock and Worcestershire sauce and simmer until thick and glossy, then stir in the peas and season.

    20 min
  4. 4

    Meanwhile, boil the potatoes and cauliflower together until tender. Drain well, steam dry for a minute, then mash with the milk, butter, salt and pepper.

    15 min
  5. 5

    Heat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Spoon the filling into a baking dish, top with the mash, rough it up with a fork and scatter over the cheddar.

  6. 6

    Bake until the top is golden and the filling is bubbling at the edges.

    20 min

Watch how it's made

Hand-picked videos of this dish or its classic version. Their quantities differ, so follow ours for the macros above.

  • High Protein Cottage Pie Recipe

    Chef Jack Ovens · YouTube

  • Allotment Cottage Pie | Jamie Oliver

    Jamie Oliver · YouTube

Substitutions

  • Vegetarian: replace the beef with 2 × 400 g cans of drained green lentils and use vegetable stock and a vegetarian Worcestershire sauce.
  • Lower-carb: go all-cauliflower for the mash (saves about 25 g carbs per serving).
  • Use lean turkey mince for a lighter pie (about 4 g less fat per serving).

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