How to Cook Shepherds Pie

Hello, in a bit of a departure from my normal video content, in this video I'm going to make some shepherd's pie to feed a family of four. First thing you need is some mince. I like nice steak mince, but you can put some of that manky-funky stuff if you want in if you're not a meat eater. So we've got mince, potatoes, or taties if you're from up north, or tatties if you're from Scotland. A couple of nice sized onions, a frying pan, the mince and onions. I've got a big pan of boiling water with a little bit of salt in, ready for the potatoes. First thing you do, warm a little bit of oil up in the pan, lash the mince in, and start cooking it. Get all that papery crap off the back, you don't want to be eating that. Right, while that's cooking, we're going to cut the onions. By the time we get them done, this will probably be ready to chuck the onions in. A bit more flavor, I like to add a bit of this stuff. This goes best. Wee-ah! The meat's browning off lovely there. I like to cook it properly, because I'm not a Frenchie. I like to make sure that the meat's properly cooked and not bloody red and all that muck. No point having it all chewy. Now that the meat's cooked, put the diced onion in, turn the heat down a little bit and just cook it slowly for about 10 minutes, a quarter of an hour or so. I'm gonna leave that for about 10 minutes, a quarter of an hour or so, which time I'm gonna peel the taties and chuck them in the water. I always like to give the taties a good wash first. Now because they're quite big, I'm gonna cut them into three. That sort of size helps them cook easier if you cut them up. Obviously, you don't want to cut them up too small because you're not making potato porridge. So really, as far as food preparation goes, that's about it. Mince an onion. It's cooking very slowly there. The taties are going to come back up to the boil and boil in order to cook. Once they have cooked, i.e. once you can stick a knife in and have them just drop off the knife, you're ready to make the shepherd's pie. I think the mince is a smidgen on the dry side, so I'm going to make up a little bit of gravy. And stick it in just to give it a bit more moistness. I like to use the water out of the taties. I find it gives the gravy a lot more taste. Give that a good mixing. Making sure it's nice and thick before I pour it on the mince. Mince is about done now. I'm going to turn the heat right down and wait for the potatoes. Looks good enough to eat. Now that the mince is cooked and the taties are nearly ready, all I need to do is tip the mince into an appropriate sized dish. I think this is probably called a casserole dish. I'm no good with names. Nah, it's not a casserole dish. Don't know what it is, but it's nice for cooking shepherd's pie. Hard to have any idea what it's called. That's it, nicely flattened out. All I need to do now is get the potato out and mash it. I've drained the potatoes off. So now all I'm going to do is add a little bit of butter. Or nice margarine or whatever you want to put in. A little bit of that. And a little bit of pepper. And a smidgen more salt. Now I want to mash this until it's a really creamy consistency. And then I'll add it to the mince in that The cooking thing, whatever it is, a little trade dish, something or other. Potato nicely mashed, now all I'm going to do with a fork, just scoop it out, spread it on top of the mince. Pretty much it. All that's left to do now is put a little bit of cheese on the top. I tend to find that crumbly cheeses, i.e. the ones that generally taste nicer, don't melt very well, so I tend to avoid using them. This is coloured cheddar from the local shop in the next village, basically just like cheese this does a good job of melting. All we've got to do take some of the cheese spread it out across the top of the potato like so. Now all we've got to do stick it in the preheated oven at about 200 degrees centigrade for half an hour. No idea what 200 degrees centigrade is in fahrenheit probably 400 and odd or something god knows. Just chuck it in till this starts looking crispy and the cheese is all melted. That's it i've pulled it out the oven after about 25 minutes Cheese has formed a nice Crust on the top, gravy's started to bubble up around the edges, so it's ready to dish out. Hey, you can see in there that it hasn't gone too sloppy. I've maybe put a little bit too much gravy in, but it's not bad. And the most important thing is, there's plenty of meat. So we're all going to get stuck into this now. And just remember, if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. There's a little extra one here I did for my son. He's not too keen on onions, so I cooked the mince without any onions for his. And his looks a little bit more appealing because I didn't put as much gravy in that. That's pretty much how that other one should have looked. A little bit too much gravy in though. That's better.