Derek Shepherd’s Pie
I’m posting this recipe for my dear sweet friend Erin. She has come to visit me from Texas more times than my own siblings, and the girl loves to eat, yet still stays hot, but she’s the best so I don’t hate her for it. So when she came to experience New York during the holidays for the first time, I had to make her my shepherds pie, which I renamed Derek Shepherd’s Pie, in honor of her love of Grey’s Anatomy and Patrick Dempsey a.k.a. Derek Shepherd. Most shepherds pies are made with lamb, but we are using beef here, because McDreamy is a beefcake of a man. Derek Shepherd’s Pie is best consumed on a chilly night with a red as full bodied as this dish’s namesake.
Okay so lets get to it, you’ll need the following ingredients:
1 pound grass fed ground beef
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/4 all-purpose flour
1 1/2-2 cups of water
1 tablespoon of olive oil
8 small-medium sized potatoes mashed with 4 tablespoons of butter, salt and milk to desired consistency
At this point, feel free to throw on some Snow Patrol and the rest of the Grey’s soundtrack and “dance it out” while you cook, it’s not neurosurgery!
Grab a deep cast-iron skillet or deep-ish pan and put your tablespoon of oil in there. Put your carrots in a food chopper and pulse a couple of times. You want small chunks, not shredded. Put your raw carrots in the skillet to cook a bit so they aren’t crunchy and add then add the ground beef.
Break up the ground beef a little, like obviously you don’t want a brick, but if you break it up too much you’ll have more of a meat sauce than actual bites of beef.
Season with salt and pepper, I’d say maybe start with a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper.
Once it’s browned, sprinkle the flour over the meat/carrot mixture and stir it up so the flour is mixed in and no longer white.
Then add 1 and 1/2 cups of water and stir to form the gravy part, add your peas. and stir. if the gravy is too thick aka not enough gravy add another half cup of water.
At this point, taste it for seasoning, very important because it will be under a layer of mashed potatoes and if it still needs salt its kind of annoying to try to add to it.
So now I would divide this into 4 of those 2 cup pyrex/anchor glass bowls, highly recommend for both food storage and baking smaller things. If you don’t have these, I’m sorry for you, but you can also just use a single pan though not as fun as having your very own personal Derek Shepherd’s pie.
After your meat is portioned out in the bowls you hopefully have, spoon on your mashed potatoes. Do smaller, gentle spoonfuls inside the perimeter of the dish so you can get a more even layer and the beef mixture stays in the dish better and doesn’t come out of you dish too much. Like so:
9. Once you have a conservative even layer of mashed potatoes on the surface then you can go nuts building a puffy cloud of mashed potatoes on top. Use a fork or spatula to make grooves and peaks to make for more delightful toasting.
Maury is quite impressed with my mashed potato cloud
10. Put them on a baking pan to catch drips and easier oven removal.
11. Bake at 425 for 15-18 mins, until the tops are as toasty as you like them. If for some reason your oven runs hotter than mine and your meat mixture seems to be bubbling out before your tops are toasty you can always do a quick broil.
Enjoy with wine, and vibes as cozy as Derek Shepherd’s cabin in the northwestern woods.
