High Protein Lentil Recipe for Fall 🍂 Vegan Shepherd’s Pie!

So you love shepherd's pie, but you don't love all the steps it takes to make it. You know, like making the filling, boiling potatoes, mashing the potatoes, assembling the whole thing. It, it can be a lot of work, which I totally get, so I have a lazier version of lentil shepherd's pie that I'm so excited to show you today using hash browns. It's great for those nights when you don't have tons of effort in you to put into dinner, but you want something that's comforting and a little bit lazy and so, so good. So if you love healthy, mostly high protein recipes, that's what I'm all about on this channel and you should definitely hit that subscribe button right over yonder and join the fam. And let's get into making this hash brown shepherd's pie. So the first order of business is we gotta get our lentils cooking. Yes, I did mention this is a lentil shepherd's pie. I've just got some green lentils here, two cups. You can use brown as well. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna rinse them, drain them, and we're gonna chop up a carrot. We're going to then cook the lentils and the carrots together. I'm throwing the carrot in with the lentils because these take a little longer to cook than the rest of the veggies and it just makes the whole process go a little faster. Add the lentils and carrots into a little pot with three cups of veggie broth and let them simmer for about 20-ish minutes until the lentils are al dente and the carrots are pretty much cooked. As for the rest of the veggies, we're gonna dice up an onion, a glorious stalk of celery, and you can pretty much choose about one cup of other chopped veggies of your choice. I'm gonna opt for four mushrooms, about four ounces-ish. You could do zucchini, you could do bell peppers, you could do cauliflower, whatever floats your boat. And we've got four honky cloves of garlic. Mince it up, baby. Okay, veggies chopped. We're getting a stock pot with a little bit of olive oil heating up. And once it is H-A-W-T, we're gonna throw in the onions and the celery. And you know the drill, we're just gonna give it a little mixy-mixy and cook them down until they sweat out, soften a bit for about three to four minutes, at which point we will then add the mushrooms and the garlic. We're gonna let these sweat out as well for about four to five minutes. Oh my gosh, this is smelling ridiculously good. And while you're just waiting around for this to finish doing its thing, you can rinse a can of chickpeas, because you know, we love extra fiber and protein around here. And you can also hit that subscribe button below, like I said before. I really do just want to help you guys live your happiest, most plantiest life that you possibly can. And I'm here for you guys every single week, making recipes for you that you can make at home that are easy, delicious, plant-based, usually gluten-free like 98.999% of the time, high protein, all the good things that you want in your life. And I'm here to provide. So do me a solid. Join the fan below. You'll love it here. And let us continue. Okay, people, things are rolling. The lentils have lentiled. So we are gonna throw them into the pot now with the carrots and whatever remaining broth is in the pot. Woohoo! Sizzle! We're gonna add one more remaining cup of veggie broth that I saved, because we want to make a nice little gravy situation, plus that can of chickpeas we just rinsed. Two tablespoons of vegan Worcestershire sauce, just for a little extra flavor. If you don't have Worcestershire, you could easily just sub out for balsamic vinegar and you'll get a similar vibe. And then we've got some garlic powder, onion powder, dried parsley, one teaspoon each, a few healthy grinds of black pepper, and a nice generous pinch of salt or two. You can always adjust a little later on. Give it all a good mixy mixy. Okay, that smell, that is intoxicatingly delicious. Holy moly. Okay, we're not quite done yet. We have one more thing to do with this before it goes in the casserole dish. You're gonna take half a cup of some cold water, add two tablespoons of cornstarch, and you know the drill. We're gonna whisky-whisky until no lumps are combined, and voila! We have a cornstarch slurry. This is going to help thicken this whole situation up into a delicious gravy thing. Oh, yummy. In she goes. And we stir. We lovingly caress, we fold in the slurry, and we're just gonna let her do her thing for like two, three minutes, just until things are kind of thick and gravy-ish. At this point, you can pretty much have the heat turned off, because there's so much residual heat already, you don't need to continue cooking it. This will thicken up just fine. Give it a quick taste test, see if it needs any extra salt or seasonings as you see fit. Oh, heck yeah. That is already counter-slapping good, and we're not even done! Ha ha! Welcome to the counter behind me. Grab yourself a 9x16 casserole dish and some vegan butter. I've got some basil here, and we're just gonna butter the ever-loving goodness out of the bottom and the sides, just so that, you know, we don't have a super sticky situation. We don't want things to like burn or stick. Okay, that should be plenty. Grab all of the shepherd's pie filling, and we're just gonna dump it to crumpet, baby! Woo! Smooth it all out into a nice even layer, so that we can fit all of our hash browns on top beautifully. Now, I literally have just a giant frozen bag of hash browns, you guys. You see? Hash browns, frozen. Delicious. Now, all we're gonna do with these bad boys is literally just spread them out in a layer on top, and I can't exactly tell you how many you're gonna need, but it'll really depend on the size of your tray. Okay, we had to play a little bit of hash brown Tetris here, but I figured out a pretty cool little pattern that just happened to work for my shape and size of casserole dish. Isn't that like the most badass thing you've ever seen? I am so proud of myself right now. I would also like it to be known that I think you can do this just as nicely with tater tots. You know, just spread a whole layer of them on there and call it a day. Okay, ignoring the awkward lighting, we are going to take this bad girl and pop her in our 425 degree Fahrenheit oven, and we're going to bake for about 25 to 30 minutes, just until things are starting to bubble around the edges, and the hash browns are even more golden and crispy than you ever thought possible. Holy moly, I actually have not been this excited to eat something, I would say, in like a few weeks. Like, this is, this is, I think, gonna be, like, top five recipes of 2026. That is my prediction. Like, how could it not be absolutely, insanely good? That is so good, I could cry. You know, the hash browns really, like, in my opinion, qualify this as a breakfast food now. It's a shepherd's pie that you could eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I said it, you heard it here first, everyone out there on the internet, shepherd's pie is now a breakfast food. Make this! The recipe is linked in the video description below. Thank you so much for being here. I love you. Don't forget to subscribe, like, hit that notifications bell, cause you love me! And I'll see ya in another video, so, so soon. Bye! I would like to shepherd this recipe into my mouth hole right the heck now.