A delicious alternative to cottage pie, made with minced pork and topped with sweet potato. Low calorie and full of flavour.
Earlier this year I shared my recipe for traditional cottage pie, made with minced beef and root vegetables in a rich gravy, and topped with mashed potatoes and melted cheese.
Recently I’ve been playing around with it a bit and I’ve found a delicious alternative – Pork and Sweet Potato Pie. The cooking method is very similar, but with quite different flavours.
To be completely honest I didn’t want to call this recipe Pork and Sweet Potato Pie. Whilst it’s an accurate description of what it is, I wanted it to have a nice name like it’s beef and lamb relatives have. A bit of googling revealed that there’s definitely no porky equivalent to cottage and shepherd’s pies (the general consensus is that anything that’s not lamb falls straight into the cottage pie camp).
I thought I’d come up with my own name, but Bungalow Pie or Semi-Detached Pie don’t have quite the same ring to them!
So it’s over to you… Let me know in the comments if you’ve got any suggestions.
This pie recipe can easily be multiplied to serve more people or to make extra to save for later. The only ingredient that you shouldn’t simply multiply is the pork stock. The amount of stock you use should be kept the same regardless of the number of servings, if you multiply it up it won’t reduce down and your pie filling will be very wet.
If you want to freeze or chill the pie to save for later, then do it before baking. I tend to freeze the sweet potato mash and pork filling separately and then defrost them and assemble when you need them. I prefer to do it this way as it means I don’t lose one of my baking trays into the freezer for a couple of weeks until I’m ready to eat the pie. However, you can freeze it assembled if you prefer, just make sure you defrost it fully in the fridge before cooking.
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Pork and Sweet Potato Pie
Print Rate SaveINGREDIENTS
For the pork filling
- 500 g lean pork mince - 5% fat
- 1 onion
- 200 g mushrooms
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 tbsp tomato purée
- 1 tbsp plain flour
- 4 tsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp ruby port
- 2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
- 600 ml pork stock or 1 pork stock cube and 600ml water
- 1 sprig of rosemary
- a few sprigs of thyme
- a handful of sage leaves
- salt and pepper
For the mash
- 500 g sweet potatoes potatoes
- 1 tsp olive oil
- salt
INSTRUCTIONS
To avoid the instructions getting too confusing I have separated making the pork filling and the mashed potatoes into different sections. However, these two sections should be completed simultaneously.
Start by chopping the vegetables for the filling and then fit in chopping and cooking the potatoes while the filling is cooking.
Also, remember to pre-heat the oven while the filling is cooking on the hob.
Make the pork filling
- Chop the vegetables - Roughly chop the mushrooms (200g) into bitesized pieces. Finely chop the onion (1 onion) and garlic (2 cloves).
- Heat 1 tsp olive oil in a large pan. Fry the pork mince (500g) until it browns. Remove from the pan and set aside.
- Add the rest of the olive oil to the pan (1 tbsp). Add the mushrooms and onion (not the garlic) and cook on a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to ensure that they don't burn.
- Add the garlic, flour (1 tbsp) and tomato purée (1 tbsp) and cook for a couple of minutes.
- Finely chop the sage (a handful)
- Return the pork to the pan and add the port (2 tbsp), worcestershire sauce (2 tbsp), pork stock (600ml), rosemary (1 sprig), thyme (a few sprigs) and chopped sage. Bring to the boil and cook uncovered for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally - You want the gravy to be quite thick, if there's a lot of liquid in the pan towards the end of the cooking time then turn up the heat a little. Similarly, if it's becoming too thick, then add a little more water to ensure it doesn't burn
- Season with salt and pepper - I prefer to season towards the end of the cooking time once the sauce has reduced. The pork stock tends to be quite salty so you shouldn't need to add much additional salt.
- Once cooked, remove the rosemary and thyme stalks
Make the mashed sweet potato
- Peel and chop the sweet potatoes (500g)
- Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and cook the potatoes for about 20 minutes, until soft
- Drain the potatoes and return to the pan
- Mash the sweet potatoes until smooth - I like to use a hand blender to get it really smooth
- Add the olive oil (1 tsp) and season with salt. Mix well to combine.
- Season with salt
Make the pie
- Pre-heat the oven to 220ºC/200ºC fan
- Fill the base of an oven-proof dish with the pork filling and spread evenly
- Evenly spread the mashed sweet potato on top of the pork filling
- Cook for 25 minutes, then serve
NOTES
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION
Any nutritional information provided is the estimated nutritional information per serving. Please refer to my guide to Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen nutritional information if you would like to learn more about how this is calculated.
Mandy says
Came across this recipe while looking for pork mince recipes. Had all the ingredients except port and pork stock so used veg stock and red wine. Used dried herbs too. Really delicious. As you say no extra salt needed. Made 4 individual servings so have it to look forward to again tonight!
My only small niggle is the length of time it took to make. Not sure why it needed to simmer for 45 minutes and then oven bake for a further 25?
Caroline says
Swineherds Pie?
Steve says
Came across this tonight when looking for a recipe to use sweet potato in! Made this and it was absolutely delicious. Clean plates all round!
Thanks
Janet Pybus says
Delicious, a new family favourite, definitely a keeper. My husband was still praising it the next morning.
Atgatt says
Farmer’s pie?
Rae says
Made it this eve, had no sage so that was omitted. Don’t use flour, so just used 500ml veg stock, didn’t have port so used balsamic & Sherry vinegars…… bloody lush tho!!!
Will make agsin and again nomnomnom
How about sweet piglet pie?
Charlotte Oates says
That’s a cute name for it! I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Tracey says
How about sty pie?
Robin Dickeson says
I made a variant of this, adding a small chopped apple, a handful of dried cranberries and 50g of finely chopped fresh ginger to the filling. I also added about 25g of cheese, a complicated and quite spicy Mexican variety that contains chillies, to the mashed sweet potatoes. The result was very good, with a slightly spicy zip to it.. And after I’d made it and my wife and I enjoyed it, like you, I struggled to find a better name for a minced pork and sweet potato pie. It was that search that took me to your website, so I’ve won on both counts. And, with apologies to Christopher Robin, It’s now Piglet Pie in this house.
Charlotte Oates says
Your additions sound interesting, I especially like the sound of adding apple. I like the sound of piglet pie, the best we’ve thought of so far is pigsty pie but pigsties are a bit grotty so we weren’t too sure about that one!
Robin Dickeson says
Years ago I spent a winter working on a pig farm. It was great fun, if smelly, messy and sometimes dangerous, I learned a lot, but with those memories, pigsty pie was a non-starter. And before that, I did enjoy the House at Pooh Corner.
Helen says
This looks great-can’t remember the last time I bought a sweet potato so definitely time to give it a whirl. Do you find humanely reared pork mince easy to get hold of? I might try the butchers as not sure supermarkets will oblige?
Charlotte Oates says
Erm… I’d love to be able to help you with that one but I usually get my meat from the supermarket. Sorry. Good luck with trying to track it down, I’d imagine that you’re right in that you’d have a lot more luck with a local butcher.
I really should buy sweet potato more as they’ve got some many more nutrients than regular potatoes. Another thing to add to my New Year’s resolutions!
Brenda says
Sty Pie?
Charlotte Oates says
I suggested something similar to my husband at the time but he wasn’t to sure!
Mel says
Oh yumminess! Is that what you were planning on making with the sweet potatoes? I’ll come for dinner tomorrow! (pies always taste better the next day!) xx
Charlotte Oates says
It was. I’ve eaten it a lot over the last couple of weeks trying to get it perfect! We polished it all off for dinner so it’s all gone now!
Charlotte Oates says
My iPad it trying to create dinner tomorrow as an event. Looks like you’ll have to come!