Turn Shepherd's Pie Into The Ultimate Comfort Meal With One Easy Topping Swap

Shepherd's pie is among the most classic comfort meals that a person can create. Its traditional and highly recognizable form typically includes a saucy base of beef or lamb with vegetables like peas and carrots assembled in a baking dish and topped with mashed potatoes. Shepherd's pie is excellent when made from scratch, but it's also a terrific way to use up leftovers or adapt based on your preferences. And swapping the standard spuds with stuffing is perfect for either of these cases. 

Shepherd's pie with stuffing is also just as easy to assemble at home as the traditional potato way. Its two parts are made separately, so you'll still prepare your base as you normally would. But instead of boiling the usual potatoes and breaking out the ricer, however, you'll build the stuffing from the bread up, crack open a cardboard box, or defrost whatever's left over from the holidays. Once each component is cooked through, you'll pour the meat and gravy into the baking dish as usual, arrange the stuffing over the top, and pop it into the oven to ensure that it warms through. Plan for your pie to bake for about 20 minutes, and use a food thermometer to ensure it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit before serving to be more precise. Regardless of what type of stuffing or dressing you use, the herbed, seasoned bread bits will provide a texturally dynamic new twist on the cozy dish.

Whether you've dusted off a secret family recipe or are cracking open a box of Stove Top, you'll want to keep your stuffing nice and moist for the best shepherd's pie. Since the stuffing is spending a lot of time in the oven, you need to try to prevent it from becoming dry and brittle. Each crouton-like piece of stuffing should retain a crunch on the outside and pillowy softness on the inside. Covering the surface of your stuffing shepherd's pie with aluminum foil before its final bake helps to lock in some steam and help it retain its texture. You can obviously uncover it for the last few minutes of baking, especially if you are topping it with cheese and want it to get bubbly under the broiler. 

If you are making your shepherd's pie stuffing from scratch rather than taking advantage of leftovers, you might also want to skip otherwise welcome common additions like sausage, bacon, or giblets. The base will already be plenty rich and meaty on its own. And you can probably go easy on the stuffing's salt, too, as plenty of those standard meat bases will already have enough of it. This is also just one of many tasty shepherd's pie adaptations worth trying.