Monday, February 15, 2010

Shepherd's Pie

The musical performs this weekend, and as such this week bodes well to be totally and completely insane.  In preparation for seven days with approximately zero hours at home, Matt suggested I cook up a big pot of something which I could parcel out to myself throughout the week.

At the moment when he said this, I had just come in from walking Bean on a very, very cold Chicago morning.

Result: shepherd's pie!


I followed a Rachel Ray recipe (here) that is relatively standard: ground beef, onions, carrots and peas in an easy gravy, topped with a pot of mashed potatoes.  Stick everything under the broiler until the potatoes get a golden brown, crisp crust.


We did have to tweak the recipe a little bit: Rachel Ray adds worcestershire sauce to her gravy for a kick of flavor, but every worcestershire sauce I've encountered involves high fructose corn syrup, among other things.  (If any of you know of an unprocessed one, please let me know!)

To make up for the lost tang of the worcestershire, we added more salt than called for to the gravy and a couple huge handfuls of grated asiago and parmesan to the potatoes.


This is comfort food at its finest, and best of all, it freezes/reheats beautifully.


Law School Musical, BRING IT ON.

4 comments:

  1. I encountered the worcestershire sauce problem also when I went to make bloody marys for a post-New Years brunch. Of course, I haven't really done any research on it and there probably is a version out there somewhere.

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  2. I had a worcestershire sauce without HFCs. I want to say it was a kroger generic brand but it might have been frenches brand? I'll try to look when I get home And see if the one I have now has it!

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  3. In response to your bread dilemma I looked up some bread recipes... the only thing that seems like it used all natural ingredients is Hunza Bread. Have you heard of/tried this? It sounds good to me!

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  4. FYI: A friend on facebook just told me that Target brand worcestershire is made of only whole ingredients.

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