{"id":440,"date":"2014-12-13T04:46:01","date_gmt":"2014-12-13T04:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/?p=440"},"modified":"2016-12-23T04:39:24","modified_gmt":"2016-12-23T04:39:24","slug":"fancy-shepherds-pie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/?p=440","title":{"rendered":"Fancy Shepherds Pie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I started with this recipe from <a href=\"http:\/\/menumusings.blogspot.com\/2013\/09\/high-class-shepherds-pie.html\">Menu Musings<\/a>, but I can&#8217;t ever leave anything well enough alone. \u00a0I am feeding a big family, so I beefed up the vegetables and sauce ingredients while keeping the meat portion the same. \u00a0Anything to make that meat stretch, right? \u00a0I didn&#8217;t do anything fancy to the mashed potatoes (no brown butter potatoes as found in the original recipe) aside from a bit of cream cheese, butter and milk. \u00a0We aren&#8217;t big wine drinkers, and I can&#8217;t tell a dry wine from a white wine from a red wine to anything else, so we keep a box of White Zinfendel in the fridge and use that every time wine is called for. \u00a0Including this. I turned this into two pies which fed my family of 8 and we still had leftovers. \u00a0When I asked my husband if he&#8217;d like me to heat up leftovers before he went to work, his response was &#8220;oh yes please, that was really good!&#8221; \u00a0That, my friends, means this recipe is a keeper. \u00a0So, without further babbling, here it is!<\/p>\n<p>Variations: \u00a0I still can&#8217;t leave things well enough alone! \u00a0We recently did some more experimenting and discovered this pie is great topped with mashed sweet potatoes, bourbon in place of the wine and I was out of tomato paste so I just left that out when we tried these new variations. \u00a0Another hit.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/9778_10153473015569768_4590093704785637137_n.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-441\" src=\"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/9778_10153473015569768_4590093704785637137_n-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"9778_10153473015569768_4590093704785637137_n\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/9778_10153473015569768_4590093704785637137_n-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/9778_10153473015569768_4590093704785637137_n-150x112.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/9778_10153473015569768_4590093704785637137_n-400x300.jpg 400w, http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/9778_10153473015569768_4590093704785637137_n.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ingredients:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1.5lb ground beef<\/li>\n<li>1 large onion, diced<\/li>\n<li>4 cloves garlic (give or take), minced<\/li>\n<li>8 carrots (give or take), finely diced<\/li>\n<li>1 cup wine of choice (we used white zinfendel)<\/li>\n<li>2c beef stock<\/li>\n<li>4tb tomato paste<\/li>\n<li>4 tb Worcestershire sauce<\/li>\n<li>4tb flour<\/li>\n<li>salt and pepper to taste<\/li>\n<li>2 cans of peas, drained<\/li>\n<li>Mashed potatoes (I cut up 6-10 medium sized taters)<\/li>\n<li>Butter, cream cheese, milk to taste (for potatoes)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Method:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Begin cooking your potatoes. \u00a0Peel and dice them, put them in a pot of cold water and bring to a boil. \u00a0Boil until soft.<\/li>\n<li>Brown your ground beef in a large skillet. \u00a0When it&#8217;s mostly done, add the onion and cook until it&#8217;s soft. \u00a0Add garlic and carrots and cook until the carrots begin to soften.<\/li>\n<li>Raise your heat to high-ish and let the pan heat a minute. \u00a0Then, add your wine. \u00a0It&#8217;ll sizzle and steam &#8211; it&#8217;s deglazing your pan. \u00a0Any brown bits that stuck to the skillet will lift off and incorporate into your meal. \u00a0Those bits have flavor! \u00a0Reduce your heat to medium high. Then, add beef stock, tomato paste, worcestershire sauce and flour. \u00a0Mix it all again and return to a boil. \u00a0Once boiling, let it cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquids thicken into a sauce. \u00a0Watch the skillet, as the sauce may begin to stick to the bottom of the skillet. \u00a0Once it&#8217;s thickened to your liking, pull it off the heat and set aside. \u00a0Stir in peas. \u00a0Taste and add salt and pepper it necessary.<\/li>\n<li>If you haven&#8217;t checked on your potatoes lately, now is a good time to do that. \u00a0Hopefully they have cooked and are soft. \u00a0Drain, return to the pot. \u00a0Add butter and cream cheese, mix them around a bit to melt. \u00a0Begin mashing. \u00a0Once potatoes are chunky and butter and cheese has melted, add enough milk to fluff the potatoes. Continue mashing until texture of your liking has been achieved. \u00a0Then you can get all fancy and pipe the mashed potatoes into cute little mounds or swirls on the top of your pie, or slap it on and smooth it out with a spatula. \u00a0Enjoy!!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I started with this recipe from Menu Musings, but I can&#8217;t ever leave anything well enough alone. I am feeding a big family, so I beefed up the vegetables and sauce ingredients while keeping the meat portion the same. Anything to make that meat stretch, right? I didn&#8217;t do anything fancy to the mashed potatoes [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1196,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/1196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}