A ground meat cottage pie.
For every four adult people or six,
if you're counting a couple little kiddos in there,
you're gonna use a 12 to 14 inch cast iron skillet
or dutch oven to make your base for the cottage pie.
You can double this recipe and make it in two pans
or I have a giant cast iron skill,
it's like this big, I can barely lift it
and you're going to start in each pan that you're making
with carrot, celery and onion, your usual suspects
and we're just gonna sweat that in a little bit
of olive oil, get it going
and when the vegetables start to sweat out,
that's when we can bump up the heat a little bit.
This is just on medium.
I put the salt and pepper on
because salt draws out liquid from everything.
So, that's made this nice and juicy and loosey goosey.
Now, we can add our garlic.
We don't want the garlic to burn or singe.
So, we're gonna grate in a little bit of garlic
(audience applauding)
and we're gonna add in a couple of fresh bay leaves
and we're gonna add in a little fresh thyme.
Smells delicious
and then we're going to add two pounds
per 12 to 14 inch skillet, two pounds of meat.
You can use ground lamb,
that's what my husband and I prefer
or ground beef, that's what my sister and my mother prefer.
Guess who's making two pans?
This gal.
(audience applauding) (Rachael laughing)
Now, for the mashed potato topper,
you wanna make it ahead, look at what we're doing here.
We have a bain-marie going.
A little bit of water in a larger pot
than the pot you're holding the potatoes in.
You set that in there
and this is over the lowest, lowest heat at barely a simmer.
When you want to bring the potato topping together,
I have salt and white pepper in the potatoes.
These are just potatoes put through the food mill
just into the pot.
When we cook potatoes, we start with cold water, of course,
bring it up to a full boil,
liberally salt the water, potatoes love salt.
Then we drain and you put them back immediately
into the hot pot to get all the excess water
off the potatoes.
Water is not going to make them flavorful.
So, we dry them out a little bit.
Then you add the salt and white pepper.
Then when you're ready to mix it all together,
add your nutmeg, a little sprinkle of dry mustard,
a fair amount of sharp cheddar cheese,
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melted butter and some warm milk.
Now, I do this in stages.
We'll see how much, if I need a little bit more,
I start with about a cup and you can go up from there
and a good fat scoop of sour cream
and then once you get that all mixed together
you're good to go.
Once the meat is totally brown,
I'm going to add a thickening agent,
a little bit of flour.
Stir that around a bit
and then we add a fat splash of worcestershire.
The worcestershire can go in now, that's fine.
I always put worcestershire in with ground meats
and some red wine.
As we were going to break, I was adding in the tomato paste
and a little sprinkle of flour.
That's our thickening agent
and now I'm picking up all of those great drippings
from the bottom of the pan, from the browning of the meat
and the softening of the veg.
Picking all of that up with some red wine
and now we're going to add that bone stock or broth.
So, we have a little gravy going on in there.
Keeping it nice and moist.
When you're ready, we're going to slather
those potatoes on top.
If you have the patience, you can make a nice little design.
You can take the fork and make little stripes.
You can make plaid.
You get the idea.
You just make a little fun design
with the tines of the fork.
(audience applauding)
So, we're gonna pop this into the oven.
I'm doing dill, chive and parsley
to sprinkle over the top of the whole hot mess.
Cute, right?
(audience applauding)
Very, very cute and then we take our sprinkle,
makes it look very festive.
(audience applauding)