Vegan Shepherd's Pie
Lentils and mushrooms sub for ground beef in this classic English dish. It is stuffed full of veggies and topped with creamy mashed potatoes. Delicious!
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup dry lentils
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 yellow onion diced
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 3 carrots sliced
- 1 celeriac root peeled and diced
- 8 ounces button mushrooms diced
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
- freshly ground pepper to taste
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 tbsp flour
- 1 cup vegetable broth
- 4 cups mashed potatoes made with olive oil
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F
- Bring a pot of water to boil and add the dry lentils. Cook for about 20 minutes until soft, but not mushy.
- Meanwhile, mince the garlic, dice the onion, carrots, celeriac, and mushrooms.
- Heat olive oil in a large oven-proof skillet over medium heat until it shimmers then sauté the onion until translucent, about 5 minutes.
- Add the carrots, celeriac, and garlic and continue to cook another 5 minutes.
- Add the mushrooms, salt, thyme, paprika, and pepper and cook another 5 minutes.
- Add the tomato paste and flour and stir for 1 minute until the vegetables are coated.
- Add the vegetable broth and use a wooden spoon to scrape the brown bits of flour and tomato paste from the bottom of the skillet. Bring to a simmer and then stir in the cooked lentils.
- Evenly distribute the mashed potatoes over the top of the vegetables and use the back of a spoon to spread it out until the potatoes entirely cover the rest of the mixture.
- Bake the Shepherd's pie for 15 minutes until hot then turn on the broiler and cook another 1-2 minutes until the potatoes are nice and browned on top.
Notes
-Perfect recipe for leftover mashed potatoes after a holiday meal
-I kept the flour in the recipe, but you could also use leftover gravy instead of broth and then flour isn't necessary. Or if you don't mind it a little runnier, use less broth but omit the flour altogether.
-You can be very flexible with vegetables in this recipe. Although peas are traditional in Shepherd's pie, I usually don't use them because I don't like the plastic bag that the frozen ones come in and the canned are too salty. Regular celery isn't available in my area most of the year so I use celeriac root, which is in season in fall/winter. It has a very similar flavor.