How to Make Shepherd's Pie

[Music Playing] Harvest Eating with Chef Keith Snow Four Seasons, One Lifestyle. Hi, I am Chef Keith Snow. Welcome to my kitchen. I wanted to show you how to make a very rustic comfort food dish Shepherd’s Pie. This is a pretty old dish you see it quite a bit around New England. It is usually made classically with Lamb and this was hands the name of Shepherd’s Pie. They would make this dish with Lamb. Now, in United States it is usually it is made with ground beef. In attempt to make this a harvest eating version we are going to lower a little of the fat by using ground Turkey and we are also going to omit a few ingredients and add some more nutritious ingredients. So this will be a harvest eating style Shepherd’s Pie. So, let us go over the ingredients real quick. The first thing we have here is about one and half pounds of white meat Turkey and what I did with this is simply put a little olive oil, some onions, some garlic. I put the Turkey in there and cook that off. Very lean this product and this is going to be a complete departure from the Lamb or the beef. Now, admittedly this kind of Turkey meat is quite lance so we are going to make sure that we have enough seasoning in there to make it taste really great. So, the first steps is to take our Turkey and you are about to put in sort of a nice heavy bottom. This is a cast iron casserole dish because it is going to go on the oven for about 45 minutes. So, what you do is put your meat in the bottom. [Demo] Very simple dish to prepare. [Demo] Okay, now, we have a nice tightly layer of our ground turkey. We are going to add some of our harvest eating house seasoning, it has a lot of really great flavors in it and this is going to help kick the flavor profile to the next dimension just by adding some spice. Now, right here this is where we are really going to take a departure from typical Shepherd’s Pie. What would you see in recipes are peas and carrots and there is nothing wrong with peas and carrots that is a very healthy but in this case we are going to put in healthier kale and this kale is just been lightly steams. This is going to – Oops, some gone on the ground, do not worry. This will replace the peas and I chop it up pretty finely and then I steamed it for about 30 minutes. [Demo] And the kale was just simply steam no onions, no garlic, no salt, no pepper. So I certainly need to add a little seasoning to the kale. [Demo] I just wet my hand real quick and now, butter nuts squash in place of the carrots very healthy loaded with fiber, beta-carotene, vitamins and minerals. Look at the gorgeous color. We will put some organic and local. This was purchase and grown very close by the where I live. Put that butternut squash in there and now, a touch of seasoning on this layer and here is probably the biggest departure where changing this dish. You usually you are going to put mashed potatoes on top of it and there is nothing wrong with mashed potatoes. I had made it that way and enjoyed it but today we are going to use some gorgeous stone ground corn mill or grits. These grits come from a local mill that is not too far from here, and it is an old eraloom grain and very cores texture and this was simply cook with the touch of salts, water and some milk. So, instead of mashed potato we are going to put this very flavorful corn on here. Grits right on top. Pay homage to my Southern traditions here at down on the South. [Demo] So, we want to spread it out and try to cover up all the ingredients as best we can. [Demo] This grits are delicious, they have very intense corn flavor and I am going to switch to the back of this because it is not going to stick like the wood, wooden spoon and sort of press this in here and I am not pressing down very hard. Do not press to hard it will be difficult to get this very hot in the oven. [Demo] There we, that is looking pretty nice. [Demo] Now, I have a gorgeous sharp cheddar cheese from Vermont. This is a very good cheese. We are going to just sprinkle some of this over. Very kinds of classic down here on shelve to have cheese