Turkey Shepherd's Pie

Another winner from Apron’s. I’ve made a great Shepherd’s Pie from a Paula Deen recipe. The most time consuming part of making a pie is making the potatoes (if you do it from scratch). This recipe uses the refrigerated mashed potatoes. And you are putting everything together hot and then you broil it, so there’s time saved by not having to heat the whole pie through.

The other pie recipes I’ve seen also include a TON of butter. That Paula Deen recipe above included 6 tablespoons of butter in the potatoes, not to mention what you might use to make the gravy. This recipe uses no oil, except for a little cooking spray and uses ground turkey (7% fat) instead of beef (not a huge fat difference, but not red meat). The interesting thing was that it used a package of the dried mushroom gravy for seasoning. I’ve never tried that before and it worked great!

One comment I’ve noticed with different recipe collections. Each one seems to have its own stock ingredients…ingredients that seem to show up in lots of their recipes. The Apron’s site has been using a lot of garlic butter in various recipes. I bought one stick of Irish herbed butter and have been using it over and over with some of these recipes. As I mentioned, Apron’s also uses the frozen prepped veggies too. So, at least I’m not feeling like I’m wasting food.

Turkey Shepherd's Pie
Ingredients
cooking spray
1 cup frozen seasoning blend (diced onions, bell peppers, celery)
1 1/2 pounds ground turkey breast
1 (.75-ounce) packet mushroom gravy mix
1 (8-ounce) can mushroom pieces (undrained)
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon quick-mixing flour
1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
1 (24-ounce) package refrigerated mashed potatoes
1 tablespoon garlic butter

Steps
1. Place oven rack 6 inches from broiler, then preheat oven on broil. Preheat large sauté pan on medium-high 2–3 minutes.
2. Remove pan from burner; coat with cooking spray. Add seasoning blend to pan; cook 3 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until vegetables begin to brown.
3. Add turkey and dry gravy mix. Cook 5–7 minutes until meat is brown and no pink remains. Stir frequently and break meat up as it cooks.
4. Stir in mushrooms, pepper, flour, and tomato sauce. Cook 6–8 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until gravy thickens.
5. Meanwhile, place potatoes in microwave-safe bowl; microwave on HIGH 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated and softened.
6. Stir butter into potatoes until melted. Spoon turkey mixture into 2-quart baking dish. 7. Spread potatoes evenly over turkey mixture. Coat potatoes with cooking spray; broil 6–8 minutes or until golden. Serve. (Makes 6 servings.)

CALORIES (per 1/6 recipe) 370kcal; FAT 19g; CHOL 110mg; SODIUM 1120mg; CARB 22g; FIBER 2g; PROTEIN 23g; VIT A 10%; VIT C 6%; CALC 6%; IRON 15%