Still often confused with a cottage pie, a traditional Shepherd’s pie is a lamb minced meat dish in gravy, coated by a crusted mashed potato layer and seasonal vegetables of your choice. Historically, this dish was a ‘leftover’ meal, where any uneaten roasted meats where combined with mash to create a humbly and warming meal.
When I grew up, lamb wasn’t really a meat served at home. Only over the past five years is it something I’ve found a fondness for, and really appreciated it for what it is.
Especially during the winter seasons, a Shepherd’s pie is exactly what a cold night calls for. A bubbling dish with depth of flavours, a saucy goodness to warm the cockles.
More importantly it’s an easy and healthy meal to put together, whether your cooking for family or friends, or deciding to batch cook and freeze meals for weeks to come. This pie can be as simple or as versatile as you like, you can make efficiencies such as buying fresh mashed potato too.
For those of you following a keto diet, there’s also an easy solution. To reduce your carb intake, swap out your potatoes for cauliflower, and instead layer your pie with a creamy vegetable alternative instead.
Anything goes, other than beef. Your meat must be, and only can be, lamb.
For my home comfort dish, I used a little helping hand from the Schwartz season mix from Tesco, to perfect the gravy in no time.
- 450g lean lamb mince
- 1 onion
- 1 garlic
- 100g frozen runner beans
- 100g mushrooms
- 2 tins of mushy peas
- 1 sachet Schwartz shepherd’s pie recipe mix
- 200ml cold water
- 400g sweet potato mash
- 1. Pre-heat oven to 200°C
- 2. Cut and dice your onions and garlic
- 3. Slice mushrooms
- 4. Brown mince, onions, garlic and mushrooms in a pan until cooked
- 5. Add the frozen runner beans to the pan and season well with salt and pepper
- 6. Mix sachet contents with water and add to pan
- 7. Bring to the boil, stirring and allow to simmer for 5 minutes
- 8. Microwave the mushy peas and sweet potato mash
- 9. Transfer the contents of the pan into an ovenproof dish
- 10. Layer with mushy peas and mashed potato
- 11. Cook for up to 30 minutes
- 12. Serve up and enjoy!
- As mentioned before, how you wish to create this dish is entirely up to you. You can opt for fresh or frozen vegetables, a variety of potato options for white to sweet, pre-mashed or unpeeled.
How does Shepherd’s pie stand with you and home-cooking? If you have an interesting variation of the dish, or you’ve given this recipe a go, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
Guten Appetit!
Charlotte xox
*Schwartz have gifted the Shepherd’s pie recipe mix, but all views are my own.
Charlotte Corner
Lifestyle blogger & cat mother
