Celebrate St. Patty's Day With Irish Shepherd's Pie

What do you eat on St. Patrick’s Day if your family doesn’t like the traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner?  How about some Irish Shepherd’s Pie? 

When my husband and kids saw, smelled and tasted the traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner I had cooked on St. Patrick’s day last year, I got one comment: “Ew.”

Truth be told, I was thinking the same thing to myself as I cut open the package of corned beef to dump into the Crock-Pot. The worst part was the smell of cabbage in the house, which seemed to linger on for days. I decided we needed a new St. Patrick’s Day dinner. 

This recipe was perfected over the years by experimenting, until I finally got the right combination of flavors to play nice together. 

Irish Shepherd's Pie

Ingredients:

1 lb. lean ground beef                           2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 medium onion, chopped                               1 ½ cups water

1 garlic clove, minced                                     1 tbsp butter

1 tsp salt                                                        2 cups mashed potatoes*

¼ tsp pepper                                                            10 oz. package mixed vegetables

Romano cheese                                                Knorr Brown Gravy Mix

*For fresh potatoes you’ll need six potatoes, milk, butter, and some salt.  For instant, you’ll need boxed potato flakes, water, milk, butter and salt.

Directions:

1. If you're using fresh potatoes, peel, cut, and boil in water. After they’ve cooked until you can easily put a fork through them, drain and place back into the pot. Add about 1/3 cup of milk, ½ stick of butter and some salt.  Mash with potato masher or mixer to make nice, fluffy mashed potatoes.  For instant, just follow the directions on the box.
2.  Brown the ground beef in a skillet and then place in a bowl and set aside. If you’ve chosen very lean ground beef, you should not have any excess fat in the skillet.  
3. Add the butter, chopped onion, minced garlic, salt and pepper to the skillet. Sauté until the onion is tender and almost clear, but not brown. Cook slowly.
4. In a large bowl, add 1 ½ cup of water and the package of gravy mix. Using a small whisk or fork, mix the ingredients together until all lumps are gone.
5. Add frozen vegetables, Worcestershire sauce, ground beef (that was cooked earlier) and gravy mixture to the skillet and stir to incorporate all the ingredients. Once nicely mixed, turn off the burner, leaving the mixture in the skillet.
6. In a deep dish pie plate, or a casserole dish, add all the ingredients from the skillet. Level out the beef and vegetable mixture. Sprinkle some Romano cheese on top. (Yes, I know Romano cheese is not Irish, but, being Italian, I add Romano cheese to most everything I cook. I can’t help it. Trust me, just add it. You’ll thank me later.)
7. Next, top off with mashed potatoes. Dollop the mashed potatoes all over the top of the beef/vegetable mixture and spread out until you can no longer see what is under the potatoes. Sprinkle Romano cheese on top of the potatoes and bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. The potatoes should be lightly browned.

Remove from the oven and let the pie rest for about 10 minutes before serving.  Enjoy!