How can I make Shepherd's Pie without tomatoes?
Shepherd's pie recipes usually involve cooking the lamb mince with tomato paste or chopped tomatoes from a can, for example in this BBC recipe, or this Good Food recipe.
How can I best approximate the usual taste and texture without any tomato ingredients?
Best Answer
The tomato in shepards pie provides acid and is the main coloring agent of the meat portion of the dish. Any other acid will work in place of it, although which you use will entirely depend on how much you want the flavor profile to stay the same. Adding lemon juice will give your pie a Mediterranean taste, adding others will result in other flavors coming to mind. You could just leave the tomatoes out and use a roux instead of the flour, that should give you about the same mouth feel just tasting onions and lamb.
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How do you get shepherds pie to stay together?
Mix 1 teaspoon of flour with 1 teaspoon of water and stir until smooth. Add this flour slurry, a little at a time, to your runny Shepherd's Pie filling while it is still baking. Once thickened, remove from the oven. Cover your pie shell with foil to avoid over-browning.Shepherd's Pie Recipe | How to Make Perfect Shepherd's Pie
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Answer 2
You could prop ably best approximate the flavour of the tomatoe by using some sort of roast pepper paste or roast peppers - although how well this will go in a shepherds pie I'm not so sure. If you just want the color you could use some paprika but again in a shepherds pie I'm not so sure!
Hope this helps!
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