Homemade Shepards Pie

First what you want to do is make sure you have all your ingredients.

800g of mince meat, 8 or 9 medium sized potatoes, 1 tin of marrowfat peas, 3 carrots, mixed herbs, 1 onion, garlic pepper  and gravy granules

Now what you first want to do is get a big pot and fill it with water and put it on the hob to boil, once the water is boiling put in your mince (I like to break it up into bits as I am placing it in the pot) let the mince boil going brown make sure its brown throughout before doing anything else with it.

While you have your mince on to boil you can peel the potatoes and dice the carrot and onion up. I know most people fry the mince but there is a reason for boiling it. Once the mince is brown throughout add gravy granules and stir making it a bit thick this way you save the flavour from the mince and it is going to flow in all the gravy. You should have your carrots on the hob and almost done by now so stick your potatoes on now aswell. put your mince and gravy in your baking tray adding herbs and garlic pepper mixing it around. When your carrots are done put them and the peas in aswell including the diced onion continue to mix it all around. When your potatoes are boiled make sure you mash them up and add buttter now we need you to place the mash potatoe over the bed of mince gravy veg etc and nicely pierce holes with a fork doown into the gravy bed, also for fun run your knife along up and down making waves. Place your shepards pie in a pre heated oven at 140 degrees and leave for about an hour until the top of the pie is all nice and crispy then take out and dish up for everyone to tuck in and enjoy.

Ciaran O’Mahony