Recipe with a twist: turkey cottage pie with sweet potato mash

For busy families like ours, eating well isn’t always easy but when I do manage to find the time, I do like making something new, particularly if I can put a new twist on something. 

Take the humble cottage pie. A firm family favourite, it’s a great winter warmer but with a couple of tweaks, it can be turned into a spring time dish that’s filling but still light enough to eat if you’re being good.

I swap beef mince for turkey mince, which is lean in terms of fat and cost, and use sweet potato as a topper for a sweet, nutrient packed alternative to serve up a delicious dish for a happy mealtime for everyone. It can even be frozen or enjoyed for lunch the next day when heated up for a couple of minutes – so make more than you need and get a lot out of your time in the kitchen.

Here's my recipe, if you fancy having a go yourself...

Sweet potato turkey cottage pie

Serves: 4-6 people (depending on size of appetite, or if you serve with some fresh green vegetables on the side)

Time: 30 minutes to prepare, 30 minutes to bake in the oven

Difficulty: easy

Ingredients:

500g x turkey mince

1 x red pepper

1 x green pepper (or a courgette)

1 x onion

150g x mushrooms

2 x cloves of garlic

1 x gel vegetable stock

1 x chicken stock cube

2 x tbsp tomato puree

500g x passata

600g ready-made sweet potato mash (or, if you have the time, 3 x sweet potatoes plus a splash of milk and knob of butter)

Grated cheese, to top the mash (optional)

Method:

• Dice the onion and add to a saucepan with a dash of oil.
• Deseed and dice the peppers and chop the mushrooms, then add them to the saucepan and stir.
• Add the turkey mince to the saucepan, mix through and keep stirring for around 5 minutes until cooked through.
• Boil the kettle and add the vegetable and chicken stock gel / cubes to 150ml of boiling water. Pour into the saucepan and add the tomato puree and passata. Mix through.

• Bring the saucepan to the boil then leave to simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the liquid is absorbed and reduced down.
• If making your own mash, peel and chop the sweet potatoes and add to another pan with boiling water whilst your filling is simmering away. Once soft, add the milk and butter, and whip until creamy and lump free.
• Fill a casserole or Pyrex dish with the turkey mince mix then spoon the sweet potato mash on top. Top tip: use small dollops of mash then gently spread across with the back of the spoon, to create an even mash topper for your cottage pie.
• Put the dish into a preheated oven, set to gas mark 6, and leave for 20 minutes. Add a sprinkle of cheese to the top and return to the oven for a further 10 minutes (if desired).
• Remove the cottage pie from the oven and leave to rest for a couple of minutes before dishing up.
• Serve the sweet potato turkey cottage pie with some fresh green vegetables.

This recipe is easy to put together – the bulk of the preparation is in dicing the vegetables, then the rest is in the cooking in the oven. You can adapt the recipe to use whatever you have available; you could add diced or grated carrot to sneak in some extra veggies, or add some cannellini beans to beef it up even further.

It’s also pretty cheap to make, and leftovers will happily be eaten up the next day, making it a winner for any busy mum sticking to a budget.

Top tip: If you find you have more turkey filling than you need, store in a separate dish and mix through pasta the next day, as the flavours work just as well this way.

* This recipe was made for Morses Club and has been featured as part of a food bloggers challenge collaboration - check out all the other family and budget friendly recipes!