Alton Brown Shepherd's Pie {Cozy Comfort!} Gonna Want Seconds (2024)

Alton Brown shepherd’s pie is an incredible comfort food. Delicious, super flavorful meaty filling topped with a mound of rich, buttery mashed potatoes!

Alton Brown’s recipe is a true Shepherd’s Pie, with ground lamb as the expected focal point of a simple but flavorful dish. He uses chicken broth rather than a heavier beef stock to allow the flavor of the lamb to come through.

A touch of acidity from the tomato paste balances the underlying sweetness of the carrots, corn, and peas, and the filling is seasoned with fresh rosemary, thyme, and traditional herbs that enhance the earthiness of this dish.

He tops it all off with a dense mountain of mashed potatoes, incorporating an egg yolk with the butter and half-and-half for an extra creamy topping. (By the way, egg yolks are a great addition any time you make mashed potatoes – trust me. Try it.) All these textures and flavors with a touch of history to combine for recipe perfection.

If you’re a fan of the amazing Alton Brown, I hope you’ll try a few more of my favorite of his recipes! I promise you won’t be disappointed! We love Alton Brown chocolate chip cookie, Alton Brown Meatloaf recipe, and Alton Brown chili can’t be beat!!

What Is Shepherd’s Pie?

Shepherd’s Pie and Cottage Pie are often used interchangeably to describe the same dish, but there is a difference, and it’s a meaty matter. Recipes for Cottage Pie appear in Scotland during the 1700s as a peasant dish made with beef. These farmers, who often lived in modest “cottages,” used their leftovers du jour to create this inexpensive, simple dish.

Shepherd’s Pie, which didn’t appear in Scottish/English cookbooks until the late 1800s, specifically refers to a dish made with lamb. Whether you are in the beef or the mutton camp, a traditional Shepherd’s pie would include little more than meaty leftovers in a rich homemade bone broth, with a blanket of fluffy potatoes tucking in the hearty filling before crisping in the oven.

Shepherd’s Pie began to appear in cookbooks on the U.S. side of the pond in the early 1900s. American cooks put their own creative spins on the dish, using less traditional (sometimes controversial) vegetables like corn, as well as different herbs and wine to intensify the flavors of the filling, sometimes adding cheese or other ingredients to the potato layer.

The results gave us a new Americanized classic Shepherd’s Pie recipe like Mr. Brown’s. Cottage Pie recipes have also undergone this same tasty evolution.

What Kind of Meat Is In Shepherd’s Pie?

As I mentioned above, Shepherd’s Pie is made with lamb. That said, if you and your family prefer beef, this recipe is absolutely delicious and made with beef!

How To Make Alton Brown Shepherd’s Pie

1. Make the potatoes: Boil the potatoes
2. Mash the potatoes until there are no lumps and stir in the half-and-half mixture.
3. Add the egg yolk.
4. Make the filling: Saute the onions and carrots in a skillet.
5. Stir in the lamb or beef, salt, and pepper, and saute until the meat is cooked through. Drain excess fat and sprinkle flour.
6. Stir in the tomato paste, chicken broth, Worcestershire, rosemary, and thyme. Boil. Stir in the thawed and well-drained corn and peas.
7. Pour the filling mixture into the baking dish. Spread the top evenly with the mashed potatoes. Bake
8. Serve.

*See the full instructions below.

Alton Brown Shepherd’s Pie Recipe Notes

• Draining the Meat-you want there to be some fat in the finished meat and veggie mixture but not an excessive amount. The exact amount you have will depend on the amount of ground meat you use. I do not drain the meat on paper towels but rather, move the meat to one side of the pan and carefully, with the heat OFF, tip the skillet so that the fat rolls to the edge of the skillet. I then sop up the excess fat with paper towels, leaving a few teaspoons of the fat. This way some of the fat remains in the meat and will mix with the flour to thicken the filling.
• Mashed Potatoes – Alton Brown’s Shepherd’s Pie recipe calls for Russet potatoes, and as I’ve mentioned in other recipes, I’m partial to using those in any dish that calls for a starchy tuber. Yukon gold would substitute well here, though, if you just happen to have those on hand.
  • While some recipes smooth out the potatoes on top, I suggest roughing up the surface a bit or using a piping bag with a fluted tip, since those thinner sections of potatoes will dry out and crisp a little faster for extra crunchy goodness.

Storing + Freezing + Make-Ahead

• How Long Can You Keep This In The Fridge? This can be stored in the fridge for 3-4 days.
• Can You Freeze This? Yes, this recipe can be frozen. There will be some texture changes when you freeze potatoes, so it’s best not to bake the dish before freezing. Simply prepare the filling, top it with potatoes, and cool it completely before wrapping it carefully and placing it in your freezer.
  • You should thaw it overnight in the refrigerator before baking as directed in the original recipe, approximately 30 minutes, noting that you may need a few additional minutes of cooking time to make sure the filling is heated all the way through. If you don’t have time for overnight thawing, place the dish, covered in foil, in a 350-degree oven for about an hour, to achieve similar results. (Make sure the baking dish you’re using can go from freezer to oven. Aluminum foil pans are great for this purpose.)
• Make-Ahead: You can prepare the entire dish 2 days ahead, cover and refrigerate, then proceed with baking. Never put a cold baking dish into a preheated oven. Leave the dish out and let it come to room temperature before placing it in the oven. You may need to bake it for an additional 10-20 minutes.

More Beefy Casseroles You’ll LOVE:

• Impossible Cheeseburger Pie
• Hamburger Casserole
• Johnny Marzetti Casserole
• Sloppy Joe Casserole
• Cowboy Casserole
• John Wayne Casserole
• Hamburger Potato Casserole
• Runza Casserole
• Dorito Casserole
• Hamburger Rice Casserole

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