Rachael Ray 365’s Turkey Shepherd Pie

When i saw this recipe, I was like there is no way you could make a shepherd pie in 30 minutes. There is just too much work involved in it. There is so many ingredients, so many things to prepare. You gotta pan cook the meat, boil the potatoes and smash them, and finally broil it in the oven. Way too many things to do. So instead of doing it alone, I decided to get some helpers. Obviously when we cook in our dorms, we usually have people joining us for the meal, whether is it our room mates or friends.

So I had three friends who came in at different points in the preparation process. Firstly I had Elspeth, a good friend of mine who is also from Singapore. She basically helped with the preparation and the potatoes.

Then Esther who wanted to help but really couldn’t do anything so I got her to read the recipe from the book to make sure we were going as planned, which you would think is such an easy job. Surprisingly(not to me though), she managed to screw it up…

And finally we have Jenny who is the most experienced of them all. She actually did most of the cooking of the turkey.

So what did this meal involve?

Ingredients

3 Big Idaho potatoes (I used 5 normal size ones which wasn’t really enough)
1.3 Ibs of ground turkey
Quarter Ibs of Bacon
2 Tablespoon or 8 sticks of fresh thyme
1 box of frozen carrots and peas
1 Red Bell Pepper
1 Cup of Chicken Stock
1 Cup of Sour Cream
1 Tbs of corn starch
Half stick of salted butter
Smoked Paprika (optional)

Firstly boil 3 idaho potatoes. I can’t remember what potatoes i used, but word of advice, use big potatoes and use more. Doesn’t hurt to have more potatoes. Cut them into smaller pieces to cook faster too.

Brown chopped bacon in huge skillet. Like a giant skillet which i bet most people don’t have so I suggest getting a wok from Ikea which i did and use that. Drain oil. Add turkey to brown.  Season with pepper and salt. When meet start to brown, add in chopped onions(one medium size), defrosted frozen peas and carrots(one box), chopped bell pepper, 2 tablespoons of fresh thyme. Mix and break the meat well.

Hopefully by then the potato is done. Start mashing them in a big bowl. Add salt and pepper. Half a stick of salted butter and half a cup of sour cream. Mash well.

Back to the turkey. Add one cup of chicken stock and half a cup of sour cream. Mix well. Add 1 tbs of corn flour or till ground turkey has a slightly thick sauce. Pour turkey onto a caserole dish. Spread the mash potato evenly on top of the turkey. Pop caserole dish into the broiler to brown the top, which only takes a few minutes.

For some weird reason, explaining the recipe now seems to make it sound really easy but in actual reality, it was quite a messy issue. Maybe because this recipe is suppose to be a smoked paprika turkey shepherd pie, but i couldn’t find the smoked paprika, so i did without it. But i guess adding paprika will make it slightly smokey and spicy.

So verdict:

Time: 3 (took us about 45 minutes at least to get everything out.)
Difficulty: 5 (With the use of fresh thyme and so many things going on at one time, it really isn’t that easy. Not all of us are like Rachael Ray who have an army of people behind the scenes preparing the ingredients in nice proportions for her.)
Taste: 8 (Real good. Kinda tasted like a pot pie but instead of pastry we had potatoes. I really liked the whole thyme and turkey combination. The filling was way too watery as it called for 2 cup of stock so i reduced it to 1 and added corn flour)

The good thing about this meal is that it really does feel like a home cooked meal. It is such a nice warm meal to share together and it really nutritious too. I would definitely try this again. Got a feeling it will probably take me a shorter time because now i kinda have everything in my head. Which is one thing we have to take note about cooking these recipes. We usually take a longer time the first time we try it because we are constantly referring back to the recipe and getting the order of the preparation wrong. Like for myself, i forgot to cook the potatoes first. So the second time we attempt to cook the dish, not only do we have the rough idea of what goes into the dish, we can improvise if we miss out something or just add in things along to way to create our own magnificent meal that is not only quick and easy, but filled with flavor!

If you are interested in getting this Rachael Ray Cookbook, order it online from Kollege Kitchen Webstore!