Dinner in a dish

I have a love/hate relationship with this cold weather we get here in Denver.  I hate it b/c driving sucks, it's cold, it's dirty, and everyone goes to the mountains..which I'm not very good at.  However, I love it b/c I get to make cold weather dinners! We got our first snow last week and to "celebrate" I decided to make a winter meal.  With being sick the last week, this was a quick dinner that was easy to make.  Plus, it's delicious.  I love casseroles in the winter!

I decided to make shepherd's pie.  I always wait until winter to make it so since it snowed, it seemed fitting.  For ingredients I used the following:

potatoes

ground beef

ground pork

ground turkey

ketchup

onion

worcestershire sauce

carrots

salt

pepper

butter

flour

garlic powder

beef stock

cheese

To start, I peeled and cubed the potatoes and boiled them....basically I made mashed potatoes.  While those were cooking, I chopped the onions and carrots and cooked them in a pan to soften. 

Once these were soft, I added the different meats and cooked until almost done.  Then the rest of the ingredients were added...ketchup, beef broth, a little flour, worcestershire,salt, and garlic powder.  

I ended up adding a little more salt than originally planned and ketchup too.  Once the mashed potatoes were done and the meat mixture was finished, it was time to assemble.

There are only 3 layers so it's pretty easy.  I put the meat mixture on the bottom, then mashed potatoes, and then topped it off with cheese.  I put some cheese in the potatoes too just b/c we really like cheese.  This went into the oven for about 25 min just to melt the cheese and then I turned on the broiler so the cheese would "burn" a bit b/c I LOOOVVEEE burnt cheese!! I don't know that Eric feels the same way but that just means more burnt cheese for me!! :)

So in pictures, this doesn't really look that appetizing, especially once it's cut out of the dish.  It kinda just resembles mush which I guess doesn't sound that good...kinda like baby food. However, it is a delicious meal in one bite! I love the mixture of sweet and sour from the ketchup and then the cheesy potatoes...who doesn't love cheesy mashed potatoes? The carrots were great b/c they weren't too soft so they gave the whole dish a nice crunch. I wish you could see the layers better once cut but it doesn't exactly have edges.