Recipe for Shepherds Pie

This Shepherds Pie recipe is pretty traditional and very easy. Shepherds Pie is usually some variation of crumbled ground beef and diced veggies with a layer of mashed potato on top. Use whatever veggies you have on hand, and add your favorite flavoring sauces, along with garlic and onion, of course!

Ingredients

Tip for twosomes:

save your take-out and delivery aluminum tins for cooking small portions of things like lasagna, meatloaf, shepherd's pie and pot pies for two.

For the meat layer

1/2 lb lean ground beef
mushrooms, about 7 diced
carrot, 1 diced
green pepper, about 1/4, diced
yellow pepper, about 1/4 diced
onion, 1 small diced
garlic, 3 good-sized cloves, very finely diced (there's more coming if you decide to use the Brie and Garlic Smashed Potatoes to top this!)
worcheshire sauce, about 6 hefty dashes
basil, 1 tbsp dried (I didn't have any fresh on hand)
savoury, 1 tsp dried
coriander powder, 2 tsp
fresh ground black pepper
1/8th cup of liquid: beer, red wine, stock or water

Cooking Method

Mix and crumble all the ingredients in the 6x4 tin baking pan
Bake at 350deg while you boil and mash your potatoes
Give the beef mixture a stir once or twice to keep it from compacting into a veggie-meatloaf
(You may want to suction off grease if your beef is not good and lean)

Mashed Potato Topping

You can boil up and mash any kind of potato as you normally would and use that to layer on top of the beef mixture.
Dollop a bit of butter on top and put it back in the oven to brown for 10 - 15 minutes.
If you want a really tasty, cheesy topping that won't overwhelm your beef concoction and blends nicely with the sweet peppers in this Shepherds Pie, check out the Brie and Garlic Smashed Potatoes Recipe.

Kick It Up

Shepherds Pie is great comfort food, and I was in the mood for comfort, some heat and a little experimentation, so I mixed in about four hefty dashes of Jamaican scotch bonnet pepper sauce I happened to have on hand, and about an 1/8th of a cup of beer I happened to have open, to the ground beef mixture before baking.

Reminder: All of my recipes are built on a flair for 'wingin' it'! In many cases, you can increase or decrease my quantities, or leave things out entirely if you don't like the spiciness or particular flavour I recommend, and you'll still make a fabulous dish!