Easy Homemade Shepherds Pie Recipe With Mashed Potatoes


This easy homemade Shepherd’s Pie recipe features tips to speed the process up and make it a fast, cozy weeknight dinner that the whole family will enjoy.

If you’re making a special St. Patrick’s Day dinner, Shepherd’s Pie (or Cottage Pie) is a great option, and you can pair it with Irish Soda Bread, too. Check out that recipe here.


Easy and Fast Shepherd's Pie For a Cozy Dinner

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Ingredients needed.

To make Shepherd’s Pie, you need a few basic ingredients:

  • 1 pound of ground beef, turkey, or cubed beef or lamb
  • Gravy or stock, or a packet of Colman’s Shepherd’s Pie seasoning. (See it on Amazon #ad)
  • Salt and pepper or the packet seasoning above
  • Mashed potatoes (about 2-3 cups depending on how thick you want it to be.)
  • 1 can of peas and carrots
  • 1/2 cup diced onion
  • Oil for sauteing

I looked up a bunch of recipes in vintage cookbooks to see what they used for seasonings, and the only thing I found was salt and pepper.


packet of gravy mix ingredients

The Colman’s seasonings (#ad) that I found at the store was basically an instant gravy mix, and it had some additional seasonings in it, including tomato powder, sage, bay leaves, and rosemary.

If you want to add those to your meat while you’re cooking it, you can definitely do that, just add them to the meat when you cook it.

I used a can of peas and carrots, instant mashed potatoes, and ground turkey, and it took me about 15 minutes to put everything together once I started cooking the meat.


Assemble the Shepherd’s Pie.

Start by preheating the oven to 400F. Use a large frying pan to cook the ingredients.


Make the mashed potatoes and set them aside. I used instant mashed potatoes and they worked perfectly.

I’ve also seen people use tater tots and hash browns, so you can definitely use what you have on hand.

The vintage recipes that I found just said to put something onto the meat to keep it from drying out, so that was the original purpose of the potatoes.


cooking onions in a frying pan

Start by sauteing the onions in a pan for a minute or so. You don’t need to cook them completely, because you’re going to add the meat to them and they’ll continue cooking.


meat and onions in a frying pan being cooked

Add the meat, and cook until it’s cooked through.


packet of shepherds pie gravy mix
stirring the gravy mix

While the meat is cooking, get the gravy ready. If you’re using the Colman’s seasoning packet, mix it up. If you’re using a can of gravy or stock, measure out about a cup and a half, adding water to the canned gravy to get that amount if you need to do that.


pouring the gravy into the cooking pan

When the meat is cooked, pour the liquid into the pan. If you’re using the Colman’s, bring it to a boil after adding the vegetables.


shepherds pie ingredients being cooked in the pan

Stir the peas and carrots into the mix, and bring to a boil.



Prep the baking dish.

shepherds pie in the pan before covering it with potatoes

Pour the meat mixture into a dish that’s big enough to hold all of it. I used a Pyrex pie plate and it was just big enough, but I’d suggest using something with a deeper edge. An average-sized casserole dish should be fine.

I ended up putting the pie dish on a baking sheet to make sure it wouldn’t overflow and get all over the oven, which was a good idea.

It ended up being a little too full and it overflowed, so the baking sheet caught the extra.


unbaked shepherds pie

Drop the mashed potatoes onto the mixture and spread them out to cover the meat.

Like I mentioned above, the original purpose of the potatoes looks like they were just to keep the meat from drying out in the oven, so they don’t need to be super thick.

I probably had a few cups of potatoes, and they weren’t really thick on top but they didn’t need to be.



Bake the Shepherd’s Pie.

baked shepherds pie

Bake the Shepherd’s Pie in the oven for about half an hour.

Everything in it is already cooked, so you’re just heating things up at this point.

The potatoes should have a golden color in places, but as long as it’s hot and bubbling, it’s done.


shepherds pie serving out of the cooking dish

The finished product is basically a meat pie with a potato crust, and it makes a simple and filling meal.


shepherds pie on a plate

This was really good, and my huabsnd made the comment that the more you ate, the better it was, which I had been thinking, too.

So this is something I’ll make again, and I might try it without using the packet mix. I think that using beef stock and seasonings will work fine.

Even thought I used ground turkey, it was delicious and I don’t think it made much of a difference to the flavor.

If you want a more authentically historical recipe, use minced lamb or beef, gravy, and salt and pepper. Those are the basic ingredients that all of the vintage cookbooks said to use.

They were really minimalistic, so this is a versatile recipe that’s been changed over time. There’s no reason why you can’t add or remove ingredients to make your own version of it.


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