Low-Carb Shepherds Pie

Rabbit Talk  Forum

Help Support Rabbit Talk Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

2CrazyFools

Rainy Days Rabbitry
Joined
Jan 30, 2017
Messages
461
Reaction score
11
Location
Southern United States
Low-Carb Shepherds Pie
Serves 6-8 people depending on hunger level.

Meat pie recipe very lightly modified from MaggieJ’s Rabbit Pie.
Mashed cauliflower recipe adapted from I Breath I’m Hungry and Andie’s Garlic Mashed potatoes.

Meat Pie Ingredients:

- raw meat from one mature rabbit
- 4 small onions, chopped
- three carrots, cut in large pieces
- 1/2 to 1 cup mushroom
- 2 starfruit, chopped
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 1-2 Bouillon cubes (I prefer Rapunzel Vegetable Bouillon with Herbs)
- 2 bay leaves
- 5-6 sprigs of fresh rosemary
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Almond flour for dredging, seasoned with black pepper, allspice and cloves
- 1 cup celestial cranberry apple tea, sweetened. (I use stevia or sucralose)
- About 1/2 cup water or enough to make gravy
- A dash of apple cider vinegar


Cut meat into pieces the size of your thumb or thereabouts. Dredge in seasoned almond flour and brown in oil in a large pan (or multiple large pans…) Add liquids and loosen any browned bits stuck to pan. Add onions, carrots, starfruit, garlic, bay leaves and rosemary, stirring gently to combine. Cover and lower heat to simmer.

At this point you want to preheat the oven to 350 F.

Mashed Cauliflower Ingredients:
- 1 head cauliflower
- 1 tbsp. butter (or more, depending on how buttery you like it)
- 1 clove raw garlic (or 3 to 6 cloves roasted garlic –my preference)
- 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
- 1 to 2 tbsp. cream cheese (Neufchâtel)
- 6 oz sharp cheese
- salt and pepper to taste
- heavy cream (optional)


Steamer: Place a steamer insert into a saucepan and fill with water to just below the bottom of the steamer. Bring water to a boil. Add cauliflower florets, cover, and steam until tender, about 10 minutes.
OR Microwave: Place cauliflower florets in a microwave safe bowl with 2 Tbsp of cream and 1 Tbsp of butter. Microwave, uncovered, on high for six minutes. Stir to coat cauliflower with cream/butter mixture. Microwave for another six minutes on high.

Transfer half the cauliflower to a food processor; cover and blend on high. Add remaining cauliflower florets, one at a time, until vegetables are creamy. Blend in garlic, Parmesan cheese, 2oz sharp cheese, cream cheese, (butter if you haven’t added it previously) salt, and black pepper.

Combining:
We recommend a well-oiled No. 10 skillet (~110 fl oz capacity) and pour in the meat rabbit mixture once the gravy was thickened and the rabbit cooked to tender. Then covered it with the cauliflower mash layer, and topped it off with the remaining sharp cheese. Pop in the oven for about 30 minutes or until you see the cheese on top browning nicely.


Nutrition Facts (according to MyFitnessPal) 6 (large) servings
Screen Shot 2017-04-06 at 12.34.08 PM.png
Nutrition Facts (according to MyFitnessPal) 8 servings
Screen Shot 2017-04-06 at 12.32.43 PM.png


My daily caloric ingestion as a small female is about 1200 kcal, so I probably shouldn't eat 1/6th of this unless I was really active that day :lol:



Screen Shot 2017-07-26 at 10.48.27 AM.png
 
Sounds great! And a good choice for my low-carb eating. Thanks for posting this, Crazy... I'm looking forward to your future comments on how it turned out.

(By the way, the low-carbing is working for me these days. Don't know how much I've lost since the beginning of February, but my clothes are getting really loose. :D I had to give up my couple of drinks a day, but well worth it. I aim at no more than 20 grams of net carbs a day, but will occasionally go over that. Never over 30 grams though.)

Hmmm... I think there still might be a few packages of rabbit left in the freezer. I was "saving" them for something really good... just hope they're not freezer burned.
 
I think I'm going to still add the starfruit (I love these guys for low carb apple substitutes) but instead of doing the apple juice sub (tea) use a meat broth. Since it's not going in a pie like the original recipe, and has creamy aspects in the mash topping I think going the savory direction would be more complimentary than the mildly sweet direction. In which case I would probably switch up the spices in the flour for dredging...

I'll definitely keep this updated with whatever I end up doing! I've got one rabbit left to process, but we also have leftover meat rabbit pie in the freezer I'm salivating for so I'll probably polish that off this weekend and won't end up making this recipe until a few weeks from now.

Personally I love the low carb lifestyle, bacon and heavy whipping cream? Yes please. :D Glad to hear it's been going really well for you!
 
Ah, starfruit vs. apples - I was going to ask because I had never seen them in a recipe like that before!

I am starting another loose Whole30 (I say loose b/c I don't go super strict by cutting out seasonings with a hint of sugar, but the bulk of my diet is drastically different) - with my auto immune mess of a body, I function so much better grain and dairy free. The weight LOSS (originally typed gain :roll: ) is a plus as well ;) (I think a lot of mine is water weight from swelling anyway).
 
Guuuuuuyyyyyysssss.... guess what I *finally* found! :D Starfruit y'all! It's on like donkey kong. I'm going to make it and post pictures / review tomorrow night. ^_^
 
Glad to see others here on the Low-Carb Band wagon!!!

I've been doing it since January 2017 and I've lost 50+lbs.... 30 or so to go still.... might start working out... lol... yeh, right...lol :lol: :lol:

I will be printing this recipe to hand to the Head Chef (either me of the DH... depends on who is in the mood to cook) looks delish!!
 
Way to go SarniaTricia! I've been 96% ultra low carb since April 2013! :eek: I used it to drop weight for the wedding, and then to lean down more and for a good while now I've just been using it for maintenance. To eat what I want and stay fitting in my clothes. :lol: I was also heavy lifting until October 2015 and I really need to get back into that too....

And the verdict on the recipe is.... IT WAS DELICIOUS! I did worry about the apple/cranberry flavor not mixing well with the more savory mashed cauliflower layer with sharp cheddar on top but yes yes yes yes yes it did. The flavor mix was really appealing to the palette! I do not think the star fruit were necessary in this dish (they were $2.50 each! That's one pricey "apple") but they are delicious as an occasional raw low carb apple option to just chop up and consume. I would keep them in the recipe but don't add them to the dish, eat them while you prepare it! :D The apple cranberry tea was great, really added a more complex flavor to the dish and I think you could taste the cranberry moreso than the apple but either way, excellent.

I used two cans of rabbit, and I didn't have any almond flour so instead I added a little more cream cheese to the main dish and some thickener (xanthan gum) to hold it together. So it lightly dropped the carb count but added to the fat content. Sorry the pictures aren't that great, apparently Shepherds Pie is a hard one to get appetizing pictures of!

Not much else to say except that one serving of this was plenty.... but I ate two because it was way too good and likely blew my daily calories out of the water.. :oops: Good thing I haven't started actively tracking them again yet... haha.

Screen Shot 2017-07-26 at 10.48.27 AM.png
Screen Shot 2017-07-26 at 10.47.25 AM.png
 
I made this today. Well, it was mostly this, I modified it to fit what I had on hand.

I canned some rabbit the other day (thank you Crazy for inspiration to do this as well. It was my first time pressure canning.) and had a couple of jars that didn't seal. So I decided to try a modification of this recipe to use the canned rabbit.

I used:

1 quart canned rabbit (it was a bit light for a quart really)
1 lb frozen mixed veggies (you know the ones with peas and carrots?)
3 small onions
1 large white mushroom
about 2 tbs garlic
Corn starch

The cauliflower recipe from Crazy's post.

I cooked the cauliflower almost exactly as Crazy suggested. The only things I did differently was I didn't measure the cheese, just threw in some mixed shredded I had and I didn't add any garlic. I wished later I had added the garlic but it was still really tasty. Oh and I don't have a food processor so I just used my mixer. It worked fine doing it that way.

I deboned the canned rabbit and reserved the broth
I cooked the onion, garlic, and mushrooms in my 12" cast iron skillet with olive oil. I then added the meat and frozen veggies and seasoned with salt and pepper. I cooked these until hot.
In a seperate pan I heated the broth from the canned rabbit. It didn't make enough, so I added extra from some frozen stock I had and added a bit of water. It ended up making probably 1.5c-2c which was perfect. I added rosemary to the broth and heated it up and used the cornstarch to thicken into a gravy. I then added the gravy to the pan stirred it a few times and then covered with the cauliflower mixture and cooked for 20 min at 400F.

It was really really good. I will definitely be making this again.

The only things I would change is, I let the cauliflower mixture cool to much while I was cooking the other things. Since the cheese had melted when I added it and then cooled it was hard to get it to spread. Also, since I was making this in a 12" pan vs a 10", I probably should have made more of the cauliflower mixture. Maybe used 1.5 heads instead of just 1.

2CrazyFools, thank you so much for the inspiration. I loved it!
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20170910_145829.resized.jpg
    IMG_20170910_145829.resized.jpg
    184.2 KB · Views: 4,283

Latest posts

Back
Top