In the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, I’m excited to share a truly Irish recipe with you today! Not only is this dish a festive one, but it’s a really easy and tasty dinner that’s sure to please all those “meat and potato” lovers out there. I’d recommend serving a big green salad on the side in addition to the veggies that are already included in the recipe. This one was a HUGE hit with my kids (and my husband, too). Enjoy!
Irish Shepherd's Pie
Adapted from Joy of Cooking. I'm excited to share a truly Irish recipe with you today! This Shepherd's Pie was a HUGE hit with my kids (and my husband, too). Enjoy!
Ingredients
For the potatoes:
For the filling:
- 1/2 onion
- 1 stalk celery
- 1 carrot, peeled
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 pound ground lamb, (or ground beef which according to Joy of Cooking, makes this "Cottage Pie")
- 2 tablespoons whole-wheat flour
- 1 cup beef broth, or vegetable broth
- 1 sprig rosemary
- 2 sprigs thyme
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- pepper, to taste (just a little)
Instructions
- Set a pot of water over high heat and cut the potatoes into 1 to 2" sized pieces (keep the peel on). Boil until tender when pierced with a fork, about 16 to 18 minutes. Once done, drain the potatoes and blend (with an electric mixer or potato masher) along with the butter, milk and salt. Set aside.
- Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and start chopping the veggies. Dice the onion, celery and carrot and mince the garlic. Heat the olive oil in a medium sized sauté pan over medium heat and add the veggies and garlic to the pan. Cook until softened but not brown, about 2 to 3 minutes.
- Add the ground meat to the pan, breaking it up with a spatula, and cook until the meat is brown all the way through (about 5 minutes). Drain off the excess fat and discard. I find that making a tiny crack with the lid of the pan is the easiest way to pour off fat.
- Keeping the heat on medium, sprinkle the meat and veggie mixture with the flour. Once it's absorbed add the broth, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper to the pan. Cook while stirring occasionally for a few more minutes until the broth thickens.
- Pour the meat mixture into the bottom of an 8" or 9" square, round or oval casserole dish. Carefully add the mashed potatoes on top. I find it easiest to add dollops all around the pan before attempting to spread it out. Then the key is to make "peaks" in the potatoes with a rubber spatula so it will brown nicely in the oven (I did this by making indentions with the spatula so the peaks would naturally form around it). Bake until the peaks are golden brown, about 20 to 25 minutes. Serve warm and enjoy!
Recipe Notes
We recommend organic ingredients when feasible.
Nutrition Facts
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Sounds tasty. But it’s “sprigs” of thyme and rosemary, not “springs.”
Thanks for that catch. We’ve updated the mistake. – Nicole
Hi Lisa, would this recipe freeze well?
Thank you!
It should be fine. I would recommend reheating in the oven. – Nicole
I guess you mean ‘sprigs’ of rosemary, not ‘springs’, but thanks for the chuckle! Can’t wait to give this a try tonight for dinner :-)
Sorry it’s not a spriNg of rosemary. Or a spriNg of anything. It’s called a sprig. No “n” in sprig.
Why are You being so picky.
I do something similar with our leftover pork roast and cabbage dish we make in our pressure cooker. I shred up the pork roast and cabbage and use as the base instead of the beef or lamb in this recipe. The juice in the pressure cooker is a wonderful base for soups or recipes like this where a broth is needed. I just skim most of the fat out first.
My kids love this with ground beef or lamb – i just use whatever i have that week. I also add corn in between the meat in the bottom and potatoes on top and most recently stopped transferring it to a casserole dish and just using the skillet (oven proof) to save myself another pan to clean – rustic and the kids could care less :-) yum!
My daughter, a very picky eater at the moment, just loved this. She said it would even be better than pizza. We will definitely have this again.
We’re doing the six week challenge and I saw this recipe on the suggested meals so I tried it out with a salad tonight and it went over great! I used ground turkey (because it was on sale this week and that’s what I had ), so not exactly the same but tasty nonetheless. My meat and potato loving husband said it was one of his favorite meals he’s had lately, so thanks for healthy recipe ideas that make the whole family happy!
I grew up on shepherd’s pie and cottage pie. To me, they’re essentially the same thing, but the first uses lamb, the second beef.. Our family quite often subsisted mid-week on baked beans on toast or just plain chips (french fries) on Catholic no-meat Fridays. We all hated fish.
But Mom always tried to have a roast on Sunday, and the leftover cooked meat made a really tasty pie the next day. She had a meat grinder attached to the kitchen counter just to prepare these pies.
This recipe is close to what we had, but a bit fancier. The recipe *always* called for ground meat, not sliced or shaved or whatever. It was just ground cooked meat from the day before, with an onion, carrots, and a bouillon cube to keep things soupy. Not a chance of a sprig of rosemary or thyme. No garlic or tomato paste. Just a traditional meat base.
And the potatoes, mashed with just milk, were carefully plopped on top of the meat base and then scored all over with the tines of a fork to create a delicious crust when it came out of the oven. A spatula might work for (lightly) spreading the mashed potatoes, but it takes a fork to create that crispy browned crust.
That’s what these pies are: yummy meat base, crusted mashed potatoes on top. It’s a peasant meal, delicious without additives. Poor Mom was always annoyed that we preferred Mondays to Sundays, but we did.
Wow!! This recipe is soooo good! Used ground lamb as suggested, added frozen peas and used homemade chicken broth instead of beef (thanks to your awesome whole chicken recipe!). I didn’t have rosemary but it was fine without. My 3 toddlers and husband gobbled it up. I will definitely be adding this to my family’s meal rotation. I can’t decide if I like this or your pot pie recipe better but both are amazing!!!
What would you sub for the flour if you are trying to make this gluten free? Thanks!
I use a gluten free flour blend. I’ve also used chickpea flour.
Can this recipe be made a few hours ahead of time?
Sure it can.
Am definitely trying this! I like to double up and freeze, would this be okay to make (without potatoes) and freeze, then defrost and add the mashed potatoes? Thanks for the recipe, I’ve made quite a few from your website and cookbook, and all of them have been repeats on our menu.
Hi there. We’ve not tried that. Let us know how it turns out if you do.
I made this tonight for my family. I doubled the recipe since there are so many of us. The only change I made was I put each of them in an organic pastry shell first then baked them. I also diced the vegetables really small so anyone who doesn’t like them didn’t notice they were in there. This dinner was a hit! The taste is amazing! I plan on making this again soon!
I’m only thirteen, but I found this website and me and my ma made this. I was so good, and I’ll definitely ask my mom to make this again.
I have made this recipe twice now and pretty much followed it as written although both times I made it I did not have thyme, and it still turns out wonderful. My two kids, 5 and 8, gobble this up. Very good recipe Lisa!
I’ve never made any variation of shepherds pie before and I really enjoyed this recipe! I used organic ground beef. next time I would love to try lamb that sounds wonderful!
Congratulations! You have come the closest to what I was looking for. I wanted to find out who cooks it and how it’s used. You’d be surprised how many, so called, Irish restaurants in the New York area, are preparing it very wrong (using beef, and God knows what).
The first thing is – well, it’s called a Shepherd’s Pie. That means, guess what? What meat are we supposed to use? You guessed it.
Second of all, there is no need to ground/grind the lamb. You can make a beautiful lamb stew starter out of lamb shanks, lamb chuck, whatever, cooked slowly, and cut beforehand into small pieces. Fry them initially on all sides to brown, then stew.
Lamb chunks like that are much better. The stew and vegetables are the most important part. It should be falling off the bone.
Now your mash potatoes, you can mash, and milk and salt, if you like. Make them fluffy, and not too watery. But I would add, the nicest, tastiest, Irish Cheddar I could find. And I didn’t say American Cheddar. There’s a very big difference. There’s a Dublin Cheese I can buy here in my local Costco, here in NJ. It’s a very different, grass fed, dairy cheddar. Taste the difference, then try and melt that into your potatoes, then use that to cover up your lamb stew over the top, and brown in the oven.
Lamb stew (Irish Shepherd’s Pie). OK?
We make one similar but loaded with veggies! We add diced zucchini, green beans, peas, carrots, and sometimes corn! I sauté the veggies and then toss them with the meat and a can of organic tomato sauce, then season and top with the potatoes. I have 4 little boys and they will eat every bite without picking around the veggies!
Delicious! This Irish girl loved it! My minor change ups were I added some shredded cheddar cheese to the top of the potatoes, which added a delicious twist. I also threw in a bag of frozen baby peas as I just love peas in my Shepherd’s pie. My husband has Celiac disease, so I used Jules gluten-free flour mix in place of the whole wheat flour. DEELISH!!