Dubious about shepherd's pie

[PickyEaters]

OH and I are embarking on a healthy eating plan to lose weight. He has suggested shepherd's pie to go on the meal list as he "can't eat salad every day" (I like salad). I have never eaten shepherd's pie (I'm an immigrant) but it doesn't look very healthy to me (minced fatty lamb, potatoes and gravy with a few overcooked peas thrown in?), not to mention it sounds like it would taste disgusting! Isn't this something that featured heavily inschool dinners of the 1970s and should be banished to memory?

I think it comes from it being an affordable food for people who lived in cottages - i.e. working farmhands, peasants etc.

Chickens would have been kept primarily for eggs, and only eaten when they got beyond laying!

I think the best Sheperds Pie is made from leftover roast lamb, I cut off any visible fat and mix it with any leftover gravy (that was made with the meat juices), top it with potato mash with added carrot or swede.

Though the ultimate mash is made with leftover onion sauce 9probably not diet friendly)

I like cottage pie better, and it's easier to make that low fat. (Tho a good shepherds pie is great too.)

The hairy bikers have a good cook book which makes lots of traditional dishes lower fat.

If he tries to eat salad all winter the healthy eating plan won't last very long.. tray bake are also good and easy.

I think because both shepherds pie and cottage pie are traditionally ways of using up left over meat, when we were kids they were always made with left over Sunday roast meat, my mum would not have bought uncooked mince specially, she would have got out her mincing machine and minced up cooked meat. We didn’t often eat chicken, amazing to think but in my long ago childhood chicken was a treat meat , not the relatively cheap mass produced everyday food it is now. And there isn’t much left on a chicken after a family has has a Sunday lunch and a late night sandwich, so a chicken carcass would probably have ended up as a soup on Monday.

Slaughtering a cow wasn't an easily affordable thing. Better to keep it kicking about producing milk for cheese. Assuming a peasant could afford a cow at all which is doubtful. A farm hand might have been given the worst cuts when a cow was slaughtered. Like when in Scotland they'd get the worst of the sheep which enabled them to make haggis perhaps?

I'm guessing it wouldn't have been their own cow; like you say, more likely to be the 'off cuts' being sold cheaply to the farm workers.

It's a poverty food - made of the leftovers of a roast, traditionally, and padded out with spuds as they became a very cheap crop in the UK and ireland. My mum used to make it with leftover braised steak.

There are male calves born to a dairy herd who are often killed for meat where the females build the herd size; the beef us a byproduct of running a traditional dairy. Ditto chickens - you'd not kill a layer but the male chicks could be reared for meat.

Cottage pie is delicious and easy to make healthy, especially if you rice your spuds for mash, and mix your meat with lentils.

Make a cottage pie instead. Lean mince beef, pad it out with lots of veg and/or lentils, sweet potato topping.
On a side note, if you deem everything bar salad to be unhealthy and you are cutting these things out of your diet completely, you are not going to last long on your new regime. Everything in moderation is key and weigh stuff.

They the spiced parsnip one off BBC good food.. It's amazing.

Strain the fat off when eating and it's reasonably healthy. (and delicious!)

You have very strong opinions on food that you've never tried and declared a food immigrants wouldn't eat?!

Maybe learn to cook, make one properly and then given an opinion?

Delia Smith’s shepherd’s pie with cheese crusted leeks is my favourite recipe but I put a lot more veg in it.

What recipe said you need over-cooked peas???

1. A meal made up of meat, potatoes, veg & gravy is not even remotely unhealthy... Much more nutritious than a salad 🙄
2. You know who says "I don't like that" before they've tried it? 5 year olds. Not grown adults

I have never eaten shepherd's pie (I'm an immigrant) but it doesn't look very healthy to me

Well to be fair, you didn't pack on those pounds eating quinoa salad

Slightly off topic but I read that fish pie originated in Alaska - but with rice on top,instead of potatoes, I guess it’s hard to grow potatoes in that climate though and of course they get the best fish there, Regional food is interesting I think. Cottage/shepherds pie and veggie versions now have been a staple and a favourite UK meal for years, I think it’s nice to carry on the traditions it’s obviously loved it it would have vanished from menus by now

Sheep were out on the Moor with the Shepherds and the cows were closer to home for milking?

Chickens were used for chicken pie - it tends to need the moisture of a sauce - and peas and carrots - when encased in pastry. My mother used to make a version with white sauce and choux pastry as well.

Depending upon background, the OP could make something in keeping with her tastes (so spices, herbs and tomatoes) and then top with mashed vegetables. Not a Shepherds or Cottage Pie, but a close approximation. Or top with sliced potatoes (carrots, swede, turnip, daikon, sweet potato, etc) instead.

That sounds lovely (fish pie with rice topping) - I wonder why it hasn't caught on here? Not that fish pie with potatoes isn't lovely, but as a change. You could cook the rice in a cheese sauce.

Try cottage pie with a 3% mince beef. You could also use carrot and swede mash on top instead of potatoes.

Nah, you are right, it's horrible.

Your missing out

Might try that. Lentils go in the frying pan with onions and veg? Red split lentils? Thanks

What does being an immigrant have to do with it?

To avoid questions about how a person could possibly have grown up in this country and never have eaten shepherd's pie, I would think.

@Towcester
red lentils are too soft and more suited to dahl so they lose their texture in a cottage pie the best ones to use in a cottage pie are Puy lentils like the 'merchant gourmet' pouches (pre - cooked) or the canned green ones ( unless you can be bothered to soak which i cant) the canned green ones just need a rinse and are a lot less expensive than puy - i have used both an to be honest cant really tell much difference, just need to make sure they go in towards the end - at the final stage of simmering as you don't want to end up with mushy lentils (if using pre-cooked)