Shepherds pie recipe

meaning it is not made from scratch, but uses ingredients left over from a previous meal. I won't bother with an apostrophe for shepherds as it is mostly used without these days.

Some people would say shepards pie recipe, whatever you call it, it tastes great!

However, it does point to the origin of the dish. Shepherds traditionally look after sheep, do they not? A cowherd looks after cows.

Why then do 99% of the recipes I found on the internet insist on using ground or minced beef, instead of lamb?

The similar dish with raw minced, or ground, beef is correctly called Cottage Pie (cowherds pie doesn't sound right) and, is also very good - but it ain't shepherds pie! Here we show you how to make both dishes. See below.

The idea was, that for a Sunday Roast, in England, and even more so in Australia, or New Zealand, the family would have a roast leg of lamb.

In Australia and New Zealand, where the sheep population exceeded that of people, there was more meat available on other days.

In England, however, especially during the austere years I mentioned elsewhere (see about this site) that leg of lamb was the meat supply for the whole week.

If you have survived Christmas or Thanksgiving you will know how many recipes there are for ways to use turkey!

The same goes for lamb or beef.

One of the meals prepared from leftovers was this shepherds pie recipe.

As leftovers, we include not just the meat, but also the mashed potatoes, the gravy, and vegetables, usually carrots and maybe peas, depending on the season.

When you have cooked our leg of lamb recipe you will have some meat left over! This is the only part of the recipe which must be left over. The effect is quite different starting with raw meat.

shepherds pie recipe intro(this page)
shepherds pie part 1
shepherds pie part 2
cottage pie