Easy Low Carb Cottage Pie

This keto cottage pie combines a rich and flavorful ground beef filling with a crispy golden brown mashed cauliflower and parmesan cheese crust. Every serving is packed with filling protein and fiber. And thanks to convenience ingredients like frozen mashed cauliflower, it’s one of the easiest low carb cottage pie recipes you’ll come across!

How to Make a Keto Cottage Pie

Traditional cottage pie calls for a mashed potato crust on top. To reduce the carbs, this version uses the omnipresent cauliflower instead. I’ll touch on cauliflower substitutes and other ingredient notes in the recipe tutorial below, and you’ll find additional notes and recipe card at the bottom of the post.

Low Carb Cottage Pie Ingredients

Don’t be deterred by the lengthy ingredient list. This recipe is as simple as cooking everything together in one pan before adding some pre-made mashed cauliflower on top.

Here’s everything you’ll need grouped together by how they go in the pan:

• lean ground beef
• olive oil
• diced onion, carrot, and celery
• flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder
• tomato paste
• broth, Worcestershire, and red wine vinegar
• thyme and bay leaves
• mashed cauliflower and optional parmesan cheese

Ground Beef

Traditional cottage pie is made with ground beef or beef mince, while shepherd’s pie is made with lamb. If you’re looking to avoid red meat, you could use ground chicken or turkey. I won’t tell anyone.

Flour

Why is there flour in cottage pie? It’s for thickening the filling. The recipe calls for all purpose flour but if you’re looking to minimize carbs, you might use something like King Arthur keto wheat flour that has 4g net carbs per serving.

I’m not an expert on low carb thickeners, but Mark Sisson has a post on keto friendly thickening agents with more options. My understanding is that typical keto flour alternatives like coconut and almond can leave sauces gritty and alter the flavor without doing all that much thickening.

Update: My one pot chicken pot pie and hamburger pot pie both use grated parmigiano reggiano or parmesan as a thickener. Since you’ll already need it for the crust in this cottage pie, you might use it here.

Beef Bone Broth

Most beef broths don’t have much actual beef in them. So unless you’re using a higher quality broth, you’re better off using low sodium chicken broth. I like using Kettle & Fire beef bone broth. It’s rich, flavorful, and gives dishes a nice protein boost.

Mashed Cauliflower

The recipe calls for Green Giant frozen mashed cauliflower. There are tons of frozen options these days but if you have trouble finding any in your store, you could make homemade mashed cauliflower or other keto potato substitutes like mashed turnips or radish (like in my low carb pot roast recipe).

And if you’re not that concerned with carbs, check out the premade mashed potatoes I used in my chicken shepherd’s pie or the blend of both potatoes and cauliflower in my mashed potatoes with hamburger gravy recipe.

As a pro tip for assembling your low carb cottage pie, you want the mashed cauliflower warm and easy to spread and the filling cool (or even chilled). It makes spreading the cauliflower mash a lot easier and will prevent the cauliflower from sinking into the filling.

Parmesan Cheese

The parmesan is an optional ingredient, but it helps the top crust get extra crispy and golden brown. Be careful adding too much, as you don’t want it to brown too quickly. The longer bake time removes moisture from the cauliflower mash and lets all the flavors in the pie filling develop.

I’ve used up to one ounce of grated parmigiano reggiano in dishes like my shepherd’s pie with ground turkey with great success.

What to Serve with Cottage Pie

To lighten things up and balance the richness of cottage or shepherd’s pie, green veggies are always a great idea. If you have an air fryer, I would recommend making some citrus garlic green beans or honey mustard or balsamic air fried brussels sprouts with goat cheese. You might also look into making some keto Irish soda bread.

For more ideas, check out this list of what to serve with shepherd’s pie.

And that’ll do it. I can’t wait to hear what you think about this recipe. Be sure to come back and let me know in a recipe review or comment. If you have any questions about the recipe, you can leave that in the comments as well.