Cottage Pie Recipe

How to make it

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• Heat up a large saucepan and add a glug of cooking oil. Finely dice the carrot, celery and onion and add to the pan when oil is hot enough. Season well and sweat the veg for 5mins or so. Once the veg is slightly soft, remove from the pan and put somewhere safe for later. Meanwhile get the pan hot again and add the minced beef and season well. At this point, boil approx 1 litre of water, either in a kettle or another pan on the stove. Cook the beef until all rawness has gone and the beef starts to brown a little bit. Now the beef is cooked through, check how much fat has come out it, if it's more than 1tbsp then carefully pour the fat out of the pan.
• Return the pan to the heat and put the veg back in. Take your boiling water and cover the beef and veg by 5cm or so and bring to a rolling boil. Once up to heat, cover the pan and reduce the heat as much as possible and leave to simmer for as long as possible, preferably 45mins to an hour although you will need to stir it every 10 to 15mins and check the water level. When all the meat and veg are tender and the liquid has reduced by half, use the gravy granules to thicken the remaining liquid enough to coat the back of a spoon.
• That's the first stage of this recipe. Once cooked pour the mixture into an oven dish, making sure there is at least 5cm from the mixture to the top of the dish. The second stage is just mashed potatoes which go on top of the meat and veg mixture and they go on a lot easier if the meat mix is cold. Find somewhere cold to put your meat mix and go sit down for 20mins while it cools a bit.
• Right, mashed potatoes are really simple. Turn the oven on to 200c, get some water on to boil, while you wait, peel and slice your potatoes. The finer you slice then the faster they cook. Get the boiling water into a pan, get the potatoes in and bring to a rolling boil. Once up to heat, cover the pan and reduce the heat as much as possible and leave to simmer for 15mins or until soft. Check your meat mix is cooling OK then sit down again. When you potatoes are cooked pour them into a sieve and make sure all the water has gone before transferring them to a large bowl. Add the butter to the bowl and allow to melt and spread around, add salt to taste and use white pepper if you need to use pepper in your mash. Black pepper makes the mash look dirty, or like it's been dropped on the floor. Get out your masher and start mashing. It's up to you how lumpy or smooth the mash is so use your judgement for when it's ready.
• Last part, gently spoon the mash onto the cooled meat mix unit all is evenly covered. Smooth everything down with a palette knife or spatula or something, then take a fork and run it along the smooth surface creating ridges, these will go crispy during cooking. Neat or abstract works, just slightly disturb the surface all over and it will go crispy everywhere. If you are going to add cheese and breadcrumbs do it now, just sprinkle them evenly over the top and put the dish in the preheated over for 20 - 30mins. After that, get eating.