Vegan Dinners: Shepherd's Pie (Family Edition)

Honestly, I don’t see the vegan food series becoming a series, just an opportunity for me to put you guys onto where my obsession with health and wellbeing started by offering you new ideas on as many areas of lifestyle living as I can, starting with food most crucially because food is great. This is a recipe I began making a lot whilst I was in my final year of University as an undergraduate student and then when I returned home to my family, for them – they liked it but won’t ask me to make it unless I volunteer myself. So not only am I putting them on for when I am not around but all of you as well so you can find all of the ingredients and quantities below and watch me make it at the end of my new YouTube video: [insert link]. If you end up making it, please share your recipes on social media and tag @ldxbootique. I will now outline all of the relevant steps:

-Ingredients you will need:

(For the mashed potato top base)

1.25kg normal potatoes

2 decent sized sweet potatoes

Vegan butter, or any butter of your choice

Salt and pepper, to taste

-

(For the pie mince)

2 carrots

1 onion

1 pack of mushrooms

Olive oil

2 tablespoons of garlic granules/4 cloves of normal garlic

2 tablespoons of coriander

2 tablespoons of thyme

2-3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar

½ pot of sun-dried tomato paste

Dried green lentils

1 tin of chickpeas

1 vegetable stock cube

A pinch of fresh parsley

-

(For the added breadcrumb topping)

A few tablespoons of breadcrumbs

The zest of two lemons

A small amount of fresh rosemary

-Steps you will need to take:

1.Firstly, cut all of your potatoes and begin by boiling the entire lot of normal potatoes in cold water high heat for 15-20 minutes, adding your chopped up sweet potatoes until all the potatoes in the pot have boiled and are soft and ready to be mashed

2.Drain all of the water out of the pot, leaving the potatoes in and add a generous tablespoon of any type of butter with a pinch of salt and then mash it up and set it aside in a separate bowl, preferably covered with a paper tissue or cling film until ready to be used again

3.Next, you will be making the mince for your pie so you will need to chop up 2 carrots, 1 onion and an entire pack of mushrooms so that everything is cut to the exact same size which should be relatively small to all for the filling to cook together and thoroughly

4.Pour your olive oil into the pan on high heat before adding your chopped onions to be partially browned, adding 2 tablespoons of garlic granules and mix it all together for a couple of minutes before adding your carrots and mushrooms with two tablespoons of coriander and thyme, alongside 2-3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and ½ a small pot of sun-dried tomato paste

5.Whilst that is simmering for around 5 minutes (with frequent stirring), you will need to add 200g of dried green lentils to a bowl and gradually add this to your mix alongside an entire tin of chickpeas, choosing whether you would like to drain the excess water in the peas or not, of which I personally choose to drain when making this recipe

6.Mix all of the ingredients together for a further 30 seconds – 1 minute and then in another bowl, begin to dissolve a vegetable stock cube following the instructions on the packet of how much water you will need to the cube. You can then pour this liquid into the mix over the store, adding more boiling water to the mixture if you find that the recipe needs more liquid to be runnier – leave this mix to simmer for 20 minutes on medium heat

7.Now you will need to assemble your pie, putting the mix you’ve just taken off the stove as the bottom layer in your chosen oven dish and putting the blended mash potato mix on top, making sure it covers the entirety of the mix so that it does not burn when you put it into the oven (on 180 degrees). After this, you can add a special breadcrumb topping if you choose to which consists of adding, a few tablespoons of breadcrumbs, the zest of two lemons and a small amount of chopped rosemary into a bowl and then sprinkling it over the mashed potato blend to your discretion and liking

8.Finally, put your pie into the oven for approximately 25 minutes until the top layers of potato and breadcrumb mix are brown and you can smell all the flavours blended together nicely. After this, turn off your oven, take the pie out and enjoy😊