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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Homemade Shepard's Pie For A Complete Meal

My wonderwife never fail to cook up something healthy and good despite her condition. She promised me that my mum in law, aka her mum was at hand to help her with this. If some of you do not know what is a Shepard's pie, it is basically a meat pie with a baked mash potato at the top. It is simple to prepare and make a good balance food with protein and carbs. Here is what you need to serve up to 3 person. We made this on a 8-inch (by 4 inch) casserole and served 4 adults.
What You Need
1. 300grams of Lean ground/mince beef. As usual, wifey got the fat-less meat. You can substitute the beef with lamb or mutton - which traditionally what were used for this dish.
2. 3 big potatoes.
3. One onion
4. Some carrot or vegetables such as celery or peas or any vegetables
5. A few cloves of garlic.
6. Some butter or good oil.
7. Salt & Pepper
8. some water
What To Do
1. Firstly, peel and boil the potatoes. Boil it for about 20minutes with some salt. If you do not want to peel the potatoes, you can always wash it, take a knife and cut around it to break the skin, and then boil it. You will then need to quickly soak it in cold water and then like magic, you can "slide" the skin off at the incision you made earlier. :) It's magic - or something like that.
2. While the potatoes are boiling, dice the onion, carrot, garlic, or any vegetables and cook them in a pan with some butter or oil. As items such as carrot takes longer to soften, it is best to cook these "harder" vegetable before anything else. If you do not want your garlic to be burnt, put them in mid way while cooking. Use medium to slow fire.
3. Drop in the mince meat and cook together with the mixed vegetables. Saute the mix until the meat is not pink/red anymore. Add in salt and pepper as needed. You can skip this if you rather the diner to season the food themselves.
4. While the beef is cooking, you can add in some water as needed to keep the mixture moist. Ideally, you should use some broth. You have an option to make some if you want/need using anchovies or bones. It is a good chance to heat up the oven to 180degree C as well.
5. Remove the potatoes and mash it up with a fork or a masher.
6. Place the cooked beef with vegetable into a casserole or into a container suitable for baking. Line the mash potatoes on the top and level it.
7. Use a fork and poke the mash potatoes so it has uneven surface, these "peaks" will brown nicely when baked.
8. Put in the preparation into the oven and bake about 30minutes, or until brown and the content below bubbles. 
Suggested Serving
Browned nicely.
Divided into four equal portion or you can divide it into six portions and keep the last two for supper later. :)
Good for 4 portions more
We love our salad and we have these in our fridge all the time. With a hard boiled egg, it completes the meal.
I move the meat out so you can see them
Caloric Damage
A serving of this will rake in close to 500kcal with most of the values coming in from the potatoes at 200kcal, protein at 120kcal, egg contributing about 80kcal and the balance is from the sauteed vegetable in butter or oil. Seasoning with salt and pepper has no significant caloric value.
P.S. - this was my "carbo-loading food" a day before Putrajaya Night Half-Marathon i did.

3 comments:

  1. Very interesting recipe for me to try it out... Love pies, best served while it`s hot, right Stupe? would luv to substitute the mince beef with diced chicken breast @ lamb... I`m drooling over this pic already... Hahah

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    Replies
    1. Eezard - yes, you can use whatever meat you please. The results is the same. Just go low fat and go easy on seasoning. :) Happy rying!

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  2. You never fail to add the most delicious things to your site! What makes it even better is the fact they are healthy meals. I can't wait to may this one!

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