Shepard’s Pie Potato Boats

Have you seen all of the delicious recipes going around Facebook lately? We certainly have! So, for our next Quarantine Cooking recipe, we decided to to make one of them with our own twist! This evening’s recipe – Shepard’s Pie in Potato Boats!

To start, cook the potatoes in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour or until tender. Make sure to poke some holes into the potatoes with a fork and brush the outsides with a little bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper before placing in the oven. Once the potatoes are out of the oven, bump the temperature up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Next grab your favorite Shepard’s Pie recipe. We use a general recipe and add our own special twist by adding an array of spices and extras of our favorites – garlic being one of the most common for us. This is a good one to use as a base. We used ground beef instead of lamb, a package of frozen peas and carrots, a little extra of the tomato paste, and we didn’t use the corn kernels. We started by sautéing the already chopped onion in a cast iron skillet with a little bit of olive oil. Next, we browned the ground beef in the skillet with the sautéed onions with some salt and pepper – add the amount of salt, pepper, and onion to flavor to your preferences.

Once you have the filling simmering, cut the potatoes in half and scoop out the filling into a bowl. Season the potato filling with your preferred seasonings and butter and mash into a smooth consistency. We added salt, pepper, butter, and ranch dressing to ours and mashed until smooth – taste to check the seasoning level based on your preference.

Next, we scooped the filling into the potato shells and placed the mashed potatoes into a piping bag and piped the potatoes. We then added a small sprinkling of cheddar cheese and placed in the oven preheated oven and bake for approximately 25 minutes or until the tips of the mashed potatoes start to brown. Once you pull the potato boats from the oven, add some chopped shallots and enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 2 russet potatoes
• Salt to taste
• Pepper to taste
• 2 Tbs Olive Oil
• 1 medium onion
• 1 pound ground beef
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 package of frozen peas and carrots
• 2 Tbs flour
• 1 cup beef broth
• Freshly chopped rosemary leaves (flavored to your preference)
• Freshly chopped thyme leaves (flavored to your preference)
• 2 tsp tomato paste
• 1/4 C ranch dressing