Calculating the Costs: Irish Shepherd’s Pie

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and instead of making an attempt to go out to a bar, I decided to make a shepherd’s pie recipe from one of my favorite recipe sites, Food Wishes. Each of the recipes comes with a how-to video, which is immensely helpful.

This was a really great dish to cook on a Sunday, because even though I cut the amount of meat in the recipe in half, it made enough for at least three dinners, so you’ll have something to heat and eat during the workweek.

Ingredients

For lamb mixture:
• 1 tbsp butter ($0.25)
• 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.30)
• 1 diced onion ($0.40)
• 2 pounds lean ground lamb (Since I was cooking for myself, I decided to just buy one pound at my butcher’s for $9.95)
• 1/3 cup flour ($0.20)
• salt and pepper to taste ($0.05)
• 1 tsp paprika ($0.15)
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon ($0.05)
• 2 tsp minced fresh rosemary ($0.20)
• 3 cloves minced garlic ($0.10)
• 1 tbsp ketchup ($0.10)
• 2 1/2 cups water or broth (use more or less to adjust thickness as needed)
• 12 oz bag frozen peas and carrots, thawed, drained well ($3. I bought frozen peas and carrots separately because I could not find them together.)

Total: $14.75

Potato topping:
• 2 1/2 pound Yukon gold potatoes ($1.88. I went with three Idaho potatoes.)
• 1 tbsp butter ($0.30)
• salt and pepper to taste ($0.05)
• pinch of cayenne ($0.05)
• 1/4 cup cream cheese (I didn’t want to buy cream cheese just to make this and felt I could do without.)
• 1/4 pound Irish cheddar ($3.50)
• 1 egg yolk beaten with 2 tbsp milk ($0.50)

Total: $6.28

Total recipe: $21.03

Here’s me prepping each mixture:

And then putting it together in a casserole dish:

And here’s the final product, which looked like how it was supposed to look (thank god):

Verdict: At $3.50 per serving, I thought the price point ended up being right — even if I did cut the amount of meat in the filling in half and have more peas and carrots in it. You could save a bunch of money by using ground beef, but I’m guessing the flavor would be different. I ended up having two servings for dinner, but you could probably have just one if you paired it with a side salad or some rolls. Would cook again.

And happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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