Potato chunks are less work and more filling than mashed potatoes. Enjoy these lower calorie lunch bowls with the same hearty cottage pie flavour.

Time: 3/5
The biggest time sink was prepping the vegetables.

Effort: 3/5
Surprisingly little work for how much food I made

Divide and Conquer

• Ingredients (served with rice)
• Instructions
• Step by step photos

Cottage pie (or Shepherd’s pie) is great for meal prep. The recipes scale up well, the food keeps well in the fridge or freezer (and arguably gets better with time), and the meals reheat like a champ.

The only issue I have with it is that there are so many dishes to do afterwards. Cooking and mashing the potatoes takes extra pans and bowls. Browning the top in the oven, while delicious, also adds time to the recipe. 

And as a minor aside, it’s hard to fit this sort of meal into a fat loss diet. Which I was in the midst of, when I read about how potatoes are actually even more satiating than rice on a per-calorie basis. That’s when a lightbulb went off in my head – why can’t I get my carbs from potatoes instead of rice?

This isn’t the first time this question has appeared in my mind. All the other times, my answer was that cooking rice in a rice cooker is a lot less work for a lot more food. But ever since my successful experiment in using the microwave to par-cook potatoes for duck fat home fries, new frontiers of possibilities have opened up.

I now have the solution to make cottage pie diet-friendly by constructing it like a rice bowl. As an additional perk, by moving the potato prep to the microwave and foregoing the browned top, this frees up the oven to roast vegetables at the same time as I make the meat sauce. 

That checks two of my meal prep tricks – making use of utensils, and cooking in parallel. Which explains how 8 meals’ worth of these deconstructed cottage pie bowls only takes an hour from start to finish. It’s one of my most efficient meal preps, and I am proud of the results.

Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 1

Dramatis Personae

Served 8.

• 1000g 85% lean ground beef
• 1 large onion
• Several cloves of garlic
• 2 or 3 bay leaves
• 1 tbsp Better than Bouillon low sodium concentrated beef base
• 4 tbsp Worcestershire sauce 
• 1 tbsp Tomato paste
• 2 heads of broccoli
• 2 large carrots
• Salt, pepper and olive oil to taste

Executive summary

1. Cut the onion and garlic. Brown the beef in the pan.
2. Add onion, garlic, bay leaves and tomato paste. Stir fry together, until aromatic.
3. Add water, Worcestershire sauce, and Better than Bouillon. Bring the pan to a simmer, checking and adjusting the water level every few minutes.
4. Cut and wash the broccoli and carrots. Toss in salt, pepper and olive oil. Roast in the oven at 200C/400F for about 30 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, cut potatoes into chunks. Microwave on high for 15 to 20 minutes until easily pierced by a fork.
6. Taste the meat sauce and adjust for seasoning. Once everything is cooked, combine and serve.

Play by Play

The meat sauce takes the longest, so I am beginning with that. Let’s get all the aromatics sorted before I go to the stove.

Building a base by browning the meat, adding the tomato paste and the aromatics, then the liquids. It can safely simmer like this for as long as the other steps take, as long as I keep the water level topped up.

Unlike last time, I have some actual Worcestershire sauce instead of having to DIY an improvised solution!

Always eat your veggies! Carrots and broccoli gets salted, peppered and oiled before being left to roast in the oven without much need for babysitting...

Which leaves my hands free to go microwave the potatoes. How long it takes depends on your microwave, and how large you cut your potatoes. Toss them every 5 minutes or so and test for doneness.

The meat sauce is done whenever the vegetables and the potatoes are done too. It’s time to assemble and serve.

So much easier and quite a few calories saved for a very similar taste, if you are willing to look past the presentation.

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