Apron Free Cooking ~ Shepherd’s Pie

By Noel Lizotte

March means spring, bas­ket­ball and St. Patrick’s Day. Not nec­es­sar­ily in that order. In Ohio, March is usu­ally just a tease about spring. We’re as likely to have a bliz­zard as cro­cuses. If you’re a bas­ket­ball fan, then the mad­ness of play­off games takes hold and you prob­a­bly wouldn’t notice a bliz­zard. It’s the St. Patrick’s Day that is the March big deal for my family.

When my kids were lit­tle, they learned that their great grand­mother come over from Ire­land on the boat. That fact, com­bined with a few lep­rechaun leg­end sto­ries con­vinced them to embrace their Irish her­itage and St. Patrick’s Day. We read books about Ire­land. We dressed in green clothes. We ate Irish food. All in cel­e­bra­tion of the priest lead­ing the snakes out of Ireland.

One of our favorite Irish meals is Shepherd’s Pie. You’ll like the sim­plic­ity of this one dish meal and its savory fla­vors. This recipe is our inter­pre­ta­tion of the tra­di­tional meal.

Shepherd’s Pie

1 lb ground meat

2 large eggs

Salt and pep­per to taste

1 pkg (10 ounces) frozen mixed vegetables

3 large potatoes

½ cup milk

3 TB but­ter

1 ½ cup shred­ded ched­dar cheese

Pre­heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahren­heit. Cut the pota­toes in 1 inch chunks and place in a pan of water. Bring to a boil and cook until you can eas­ily poke them with a fork. While the pota­toes are cook­ing, in a large bowl mix the ground meat, eggs and salt and pep­per. Spread the meat mix­ture in an 8x8 inch bak­ing dish and pat into an even layer. Spread the frozen veg­eta­bles evenly over the meat. Drain the cook­ing water from the pota­toes and place them in a bowl. Mash the pota­toes with the milk and but­ter. Spread the mashed pota­toes over the veg­eta­bles in the bak­ing dish. Sprin­kle the ched­dar cheese on top the mashed pota­toes. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Make it a Meal: Serve with a side salad and rolls for a com­plete meal. If you want to have a tra­di­tional Irish meal, serve with some but­ter­milk bis­cuits and a side of col­can­non, (cooked cabbage).

Approx­i­mate Nutri­tional Infor­ma­tion: Serv­ings Per Recipe: 9, Amount Per Serv­ing: Calo­ries: 295, Total Fat: 17g, Cho­les­terol: 99mg, Sodium: 211mg, Total Carbs: 19g, Pro­tein: 17g.

Vari­a­tions: We use ground beef in our shepherd’s pie, since it’s read­ily avail­able in my local gro­cery stores. You can fol­low the more tra­di­tional recipe and use ground lamb. If you have other ground meat in your freezer, then use what’s on hand.

Since this dish is a favorite at my house, when the kids are home, I dou­ble this recipe and bake it in a 9x13 bak­ing dish. If you wanted to do some batch cook­ing, I’d sug­gest dou­bling the recipe and bak­ing it in two 8x8 pans, or four 8x5x3 loaf pans. Serve one pan for sup­per on March 17 and wrap the extra pans in foil. Let then cool com­pletely and then freeze them for din­ner another night.

Noel Lizotte is break­ing free of cor­po­rate stress with con­ve­nience cook­ing! This recipe is sim­i­lar to ones printed in her cook­book Apron Free Cook­ing which is avail­able on the web­site www.apronfreecooking.com.

Posted by Noel Lizotte on Mar 4 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.