The Good Shepherd's pie (with Guinness!)

I first made shepherd's pie about a year ago, and we've had it three or four times since then. I'm not normally a huge fan of lamb, but I do like it in the context of stew (and while this isn't exactly stew, it's pretty darn close). My husband loves lamb, though, so we both win: I get to make something like a stew, where I don't have to worry about whether the meat is done or not (because after 2 hours in the oven, it'd better be done), and he gets lamb. So there.

Every time I've made shepherd's pie, I've combined some techniques from this recipe with most of the ingredients of this one and this one (I found them all on epicurious). Each recipe alone seems to have some little twist that sounds like way too much work (such as the venison the first recipe calls for - what now? I'm not on the Oregon Trail here! [although Johnny does have dysentery]). But from the three of them, I've been able to cobble together a process that works for me. And frankly, although I always toggle between the recipes to make sure I'm not forgetting something, I would have to do something horrendous to screw up shepherd's pie. Like, put in soy sauce instead of Guinness. That's literally the only thing I can think of that would make it bad.

Anyway, I thought I'd do myself a little service here and write down what I actually do, so that I don't have to go between the three recipes anymore. Next time I can just refer to... my own notes! Hey, there's a novel idea.

To make this recipe, you'll need a heavy dutch oven or some other pot that you can throw into the oven after cooking with it on the stovetop. Or, if you have two mutually exclusive pots, you could simply transfer the lamb stew mixture from the stove pot to the oven pot.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 pounds of boneless lamb shoulder, cut into 3/4-inch cubes. Already, we face some ambiguity here. One of the three recipes calls for 2 pounds of boneless lamb shoulder. Well, 2 pounds seems like a lot of meat to me. I've used 1 pound before with no sacrifice to flavor. In addition, I'm only able to find bone-in lamb shoulder, and the last time I used bone-in shoulder for shepherd's pie, I shaved some bone into the meat with my knife before I noticed what I was doing. So this time I picked up some lamb from Sheridan that had already been cut into large stew-like hunks. Honestly, I'm not sure what part of the lamb it was from, but it looked good and fresh, and it was delicious. I'll figure out the anatomical origin next time. ANYWAY, once you figure out what cut of lamb you're using - probably something that starts out all tough but softens with extended cooking is best - then cut it into 3/4-inch cubes. Or, if you don't mind happening upon enormous hunks of meat mid-bite, then make them 1-inch cubes like the epicurious recipes say. I myself find that to be a little too big.
• 5 tablespoons flour
• olive oil to brown the lamb in
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup beef broth (reduced sodium works great, if you have it)
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup Guinness, or other stout/porter
• 1.5 tablespoons tomato paste
• Fresh thyme from 3 or 4 sprigs
• 2 pounds baking potatoes
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup milk (enough to mash the potatoes with - you might need a little more, or less)
• 1/2 large onion, chopped
• 5 carrots, peeled and sliced diagonally
• 4 leeks, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2-inch slices
• 2 turnips, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 5 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 1/2 cup of cheese curds, or medium cheddar cheese if you can't find cheese curds (Trader Joe's sells them, as does New Seasons and probably any grocery that has a fancy cheese section).
• 1 cup frozen peas, or whatever quantity is left in the frostbitten bag you need to use up

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. If necessary, move oven racks around so that your dutch oven will fit into the oven when the time comes.

2. Heat a tablespoon or two of the olive oil on medium heat, or lower if your stove is hot and your pot is thin.

3. Put the flour and some salt and pepper in a plastic bag large enough to hold the lamb. Put the lamb in, seal the bag, and shake it around until the lamb is coated in the flour.

4. Once the oil in the dutch oven is hot, add half the lamb and brown on all sides, about 6-8 minutes. Transfer the browned lamb to a plate and repeat the process with the other half of the lamb (if your pot is huge, you might be able to brown all the lamb at once).

5. When all the lamb has browned, reduce the heat to medium-low, put the plated lamb back into the pot, and add the 5 minced garlic cloves. Cook, stirring well so the garlic doesn't stick and burn, for 1 minute or so, until the garlic starts to smell good. Remove the lamb-garlic mixture to the plate once again, retaining the cooking liquids in the pot (if possible).

6. Add the Guinness to the pot. Boil over high heat for 1 minute, scraping up any brown bits. Stir in tomato paste and boil until mixture is reduced by half - 2-3 minutes.

This seems as good a space as any for a brief intermission of produce photos - yay, turnip! Hurray, leek!

...and, we're back.

7. Add beef broth, water, thyme, lamb with any juices on the plate, leeks, carrots, onion, turnips, and a little salt and pepper. Stir to combine. Bring mixture to a simmer, then remove from heat.

8. Cover pot with foil before putting the lid on, if your dutch oven is sneaky like mine and allows a good amount of air to get through. If you have a fancy Le Creuset casserole dish with a lid that weighs more than the average household pet, then you probably don't need to bother with foil.

9. Put the pot into the oven. Simmer for 1.5-2 hours, stirring once or twice (I usually let it take the full two hours).

Here it is: your last chance to opt out of having shepherd's pie tonight! (not that you would want to do that). At this point, if a better offer comes along you can just cool the lamb mixture once it is done, refrigerate it, and reheat it the next day to add the frozen peas and assemble the pie.

Otherwise, carry on to make the mashed potato topping:

10. When the lamb mixture has about 45 minutes to go, put on a pot of water to boil for the potatoes. Peel and chop the potatoes. Add them to the boiling water, or heat them up in the cold water - however you normally make mashed potatoes. When the potato chunks are soft enough for mashed potatoes, drain them, return them to the pot, and mash in the butter, a little milk at a time, and some salt and pepper. Note: you do want the potato topping to end up slightly soupier than you might prefer your mashed potatoes to be normally, so that you'll be able to spread it over the lamb mixture. Normally I don't like over-processed mashed potatoes, but I force myself to make an exception in this case.

11. When the lamb mixture's two hours are up, pull it out of the oven and stir in the frozen peas. If you do it right away, you shouldn't need to put the dutch oven back on the heat. If the mixture looks really soupy, you can put it back on the heat and stir in a little flour. Otherwise:

12. Move the oven racks around (AGAIN) so that whatever (broiler-safe) baking dish you use for the pie will be about 3 inches away from the broiler. Preheat the broiler.

13. Spoon the lamb mixture into a traditional broiler-safe pie pan, if that's what you're using, or into multiple smaller casserole dishes. Really, you might just need to eyeball the quantity of lamb mixture you ended up with and compare it to the various sizes of baking dishes you have lying around. It's pretty flexible.

14. Spoon the potato mixture over the lamb mixture, spreading it around with a spatula or spoon until the mixture is covered. If you want, use a fork to make fun little hatch-marks in the potato - it looks cool once the broiler has done its magic.

15. Grate the cheese curds or cheddar over the potato topping (note: if you have a grater that will produce microscopic chips, instead of long strings that cling together, that would be best. When the cheese gets shredded instead of grated, it tends to ball up in clumps, which produces the unevenly-broiled appearance that appears in my picture below).

16. Broil the pie for about five minutes, until it's golden-brown and bubbly on top. Don't pay any attention to the anemic appearance of the pie in the picture - it suffered the cheddar-clumping fate described above, and was also under-broiled the first time around, and then reheated the next day.

Spoon onto individual plates, and enjoy! This recipe makes 6-8 servings.