Have you been craving cozy comfort food lately? We certainly have, especially on cool rainy days. We used leftover mashed potatoes to make our Shepherd’s pie in one pan. Brown the meat, sautée the veggies, top it with fluffy mashed potatoes, and then send the pan straight into the oven until the top was golden brown. It’s a great way to use leftovers. Do you have leftover steak? Then chop it up and use that instead of ground beef.
Use our secret ingredient, fish sauce, to make a better Shepherd’s pie. If you don’t have it, don’t worry, but if you have fish sauce in the fridge, we’d highly recommend using a dash or two. The fish sauce adds umami to the dish. If you’re missing an ingredient just substitute something similar. If you have mushrooms or something else that might work well in the dish, then why not add it in? This is a recipe that can be played with for sure.
Enjoy and be sure to share when you make it!
Easy Shepherd's Pie
INGREDIENTS
- 1 lb ground beef, pork, elk, lamb
- ¾ bottle beer
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 stalks celery, diced
- 2 carrots, diced
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 2-3 sprigs fresh thyme
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 dashes fish sauce
- few dashes Worcestershire sauce
- ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- ½ cup chicken stock
- ¼ cup peas
- ¼ cup corn
- salt
- pepper
- butter
mashed potato topping
- yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
- heavy whipping cream
- butter
INSTRUCTIONS
- Preheat the oven to 400F.
- Brown ground meat along with a little beer.
- Add and saute garlic, onions, celery, and carrots with the beef.
- Add tomato paste and cook a few minutes to get the raw tomato paste out.
- Add herbs, fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and sprinkle with flour.
- Add more beer and chicken stock. The liquid should thicken up from the flour.
- Add peas, corn, and season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Top with mashed potatoes (fresh or leftover) and dot with butter.
- Bake for 40 minutes or until bubbly and golden brown on top.
Mashed Potato Topper
- Boil potatoes in lightly salted water until you can stick a fork easily through the potato.
- Add butter and cream a little at a time and mash potatoes with a wooden spoon. Add more as needed. You can always add more but you can't take it away.
- Season with salt and pepper to taste.
