Is It Shepherd’s Pie or Cottage Pie?

I am a day late and a dollar short on just about everything lately. I skipped the blog entirely last week, so I missed the opportunity to talk about all things Irish for St. Patrick’s Day. I did, however, make a meal attributed to the Irish for this week’s blog.

While Shepherd’s Pie popped up on all kinds of food sites last week for St. Patrick’s Day, it is actually thought to have originated in England or Scotland as an economic meal and an easy way to use up leftovers. Shepherd’s Pie comes from sheep country and traditionally contained minced lamb. The recipe I used to adapt my own calls itself a Shepherd’s Pie, but technically should be called a Cottage Pie. Cottage Pie typically contains ground beef, not lamb.

We are not a lamb family, so ground beef is what I used. Whatever you want to call it, it is a good, wholesome, comforting meal for a cool evening. The trick to making it a little easier is to use frozen vegetables. They are just as nutritious but you get to skip the chopping and dicing.

If you want to, you can use prepackaged mashed potatoes or whip up some instant. But truthfully, homemade mashed potatoes are so much more flavorful. If you cook the potatoes while preparing the meat filling, it is really not that much extra work.

Peel and dice the potatoes and place them in salted water to boil for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, you can prepare your meat filling in a cast iron skillet. If you don’t have one of those, you can prepare the meat in a regular skillet and transfer to a casserole dish when done. Brown the meat with some diced onion. Once it is nicely browned, add the frozen vegetables, some flour, water, garlic salt, ketchup and Worcestershire sauce. Mix it all together well and cook for a minute or two.

When the potatoes are cooked, drain them and return them to the pot. Add some milk and butter and mash them well. Finish by stirring in an egg yolk. Drop spoonfuls of potatoes on top of the ground beef mixture and spread evenly across the top. I had to use my clean hands to do this, as a spoon tends to grab the meat mixture and drop it where you don’t want it.

Pop the whole pan into the oven at 400ºF and bake 30 minutes, or until the potatoes are beginning to brown. Remove the pan and allow the pie to rest for 10 minutes before serving.

The Cottage Pie already contains veggies, but it is lovely served alongside a nice green salad. It looked like a huge amount for my family of four, but we demolished 3/4 of it. What was left reheated nicely the next day. I believe this will make its way into our dinner rotation more regularly now. Give it a try yourself and let me know what you think.