At the beginning of May, I decided to take a 4-month leave from work. (More about that in another post.) Since then I’ve been home trying to make more home-cooked meals. I knew at the beginning that I didn’t want to just eat the same thing over, and over again. This means I had to get creative because the kids and I aren’t big on pork lately, and we don’t often like chicken (eating it at home anyway.) So we’ve been eating a lot of hamburger meat.
The difficulties are it’s the four kids and me. Not everyone likes the same foods, for example when we have Fettuccine Alfredo with chicken salad. Keera, Kennedy, and I like it. However Emilee and Zaden don’t like the texture of Alfredo sauce, so we substitute theirs with spaghetti sauce instead. I don’t have an issue with a little bit of repetition with foods, but I’m always trying to change it up so the kids don’t get “over” a specific type of meal.
I knew I wanted to attempt to make a Shepherd’s Pie
I took some already cooked hamburger meat out of the freezer to defrost and then went about my day. It wasn’t until 6 pm that I got around to looking up a Shepherd’s Pie recipe on Google. The instructions seemed simple enough, but I didn’t have all the ingredients. I wasn’t able to run to the store either and it was already after 6.
That’s when I decide what the heck I’ll wing it. I started by peeling a ton of potatoes and set them to boil. Then I searched the cupboard in search of something to season the meat with. I wasn’t sure what I was doing but I knew I wanted the meat to be flavourful. I was happy when I found some Roasted Beef Base that I had bought at Costco. A purchase I had made because I saw another blogger use it on her IG stories for soup.
I put my pre-cooked hamburger in a frying pan with some frozen vegetables I had on hand. Onions would have been a nice addition, but I didn’t have any. At the start I was following the directions on the back of the Roasted Beef Base container, I added 1 teaspoon of the base with a cup of hot water into the frying pan.
Then followed up by adding in more beef base without measuring I just seasoned to taste. I debated adding more water but then stopped myself knowing that the frozen vegetables would already add more water as they cooked.
Meanwhile, the potatoes got mashed and whipped.
Once the potatoes were mashed and whipped, we added a ton of garlic plus in for extra flavour. I grabbed a few Corningware casserole dishes and a pie dish from the cupboard and added in the meat and veggie mix. Once I made a decent layer of meat and vegetables I put the garlic potatoes on top. In the recipe above, the person suggested adding cheese to the top before baking.
I added shredded cheese onto the top of two of the Shepherds Pies and baked them each at 400 degrees in the oven until the top was golden brown. We ran out of potatoes, but I still had more meat and veggie mix so I put the rest of the filling in a Tupperware container and froze it for a later date.
The recipe was a hit, the kids all had seconds and everyone said how delicious it was. I made enough to feed two adults, and four kids. There were even enough leftovers for tonight. I’m glad that I decided to try something new. Typically we buy pre-made Shepherd’s Pies, but I’ve noticed lately that a lot of companies have cut down on the number of vegetables they add in the filling. Our favourite place ( I won’t put them on blast ) only adds corn now.
I find it difficult to purchase something that they’ve upped the price of while dropping down the quality. Now that I know how easy it is to make, I think going forward I’ll be making a couple of extra Shepherd pies for our freezer stock.
Have you ever made homemade Shepherd’s pie? How did it turn out?