Easy Chicken Shepherd’s Pie

The easiest one-pan recipe for chicken shepherd’s pie you’ll come across. A rich and hearty ground chicken filling is topped with time-saving premade mashed potatoes and baked to crispy golden brown perfection. Whether you’re new to shepherd’s pie or herding your flock in the English countryside, I think you’ll enjoy this Kinda Healthy spin.

Shepherd’s Pie with Chicken?

While traditional shepherd’s pie is made with ground lamb, and cottage pie is made with beef, you can toss tradition aside and use ground chicken if you need a red meat alternative. Sure, lamb has its own unique flavor, but I can hardly tell a difference once everything comes together. The longer bake time on the shepherd’s pie gives the meat filling a lot of time to develop rich and complex flavors that overshadow the meat selection.

Meat aside, the rest of this chicken shepherd’s pie filling is pretty standard. A classic mirepoix of celery, onion, and carrots are cooked down with the ground chicken before adding flour, seasoning, and tomato paste to create the base for a thick meat sauce filling.

A combination of broth, Worcestershire sauce, and red wine vinegar is then added and reduced over the course of 10-15 minutes to completely soften the vegetables and concentrate flavors. If you’ve made a meat sauce of any kind, this process is essentially the same.

If you’d rather use red wine instead of vinegar, that works fine. We just rarely have wine or cooking wine on hand, and I’ve found red wine vinegar works great for flavor development in dishes like my smoked pot roast. And as you might have learned from my Instant Pot vegetable beef soup, another great addition to a sauce like this is soy sauce. It adds that umami factor that we all know and love.

What about a creamy sauce? My ground turkey shepherd’s pie goes a different direction by incorporated condensed soup and frozen mixed vegetables to make a filling reminiscent of chicken pot pie.

The Easy Shepherd’s Pie Crust Solution

Hey, you’re more than welcome to make your homemade healthy mashed potatoes, but the recipe calls for the fancy stuff—premade Bob Evans. If you’re comparing mashed potatoes nutrition info of other products, the Bob Evans potatoes have 150 calories, 3g of protein, 20g of carbs, and 7g of fat per 1/2 cup serving.

The 32 oz family size pack of mashed potatoes has around 3.25 cups, which is just the right amount for covering your chicken shepherd’s pie in a 12″ skillet. If you’re making your own, you’ll want to use the same amount of mashed potatoes.

Making shepherd’s pie in a skillet like this creates a very even ratio of crust to filling, which I quite like. If you prefer more filling to crust, you can reduce the amount of potatoes or double the filling portion.

My keto cottage pie recipe uses a smaller baking dish to get away with using only 2.25 cups of mashed potatoes (or frozen mashed cauliflower in its case). So if you’d like to reduce the amount of potatoes used or don’t have an oven safe skillet, that’s an option.

You can also make low carb mashed potatoes out of tons of vegetables. Check out my low carb potatoes substitution guide for a look at how to make mashed faux potatoes in all kinds of ways.

Another option I’ve experimented with in recipes like my mashed potatoes with ground beef and gravy is mixing mashed potatoes and mashed cauliflower together. This really bulks things up and masks the cauliflower-ness while keeping carbs under control.

As for the parmesan cheese on the crust, it helps with browning, especially in the center of the crust. It’s totally optional, though. I’ll also caution against using too much parmesan. That could lead to too much browning before your chicken shepherd’s pie has time to fully bake.

You may also be interested in using a refrigerated pie crust like I used to make my one pan beef pot pie and Dutch oven pot pie recipes.

What to Serve with Shepherd’s Pie

You’re likely making shepherd’s pie in the fall and winter months, so I say keep it seasonal. And if not seasonal, keep it light to balance out the richness of the meat pie.

• 5 ways to make brussels sprouts in the air fryer
• harvest fall salad
• balsamic roasted beets
• pear pecan and goat cheese salad
• air fryer butternut squash and brussels sprouts
• sautéed green peas
• the best air fryer green beans

Irish soda bread is also a great pairing for shepherd’s pie.

However you end up serving your ground chicken shepherd’s pie, I’d love to hear about it. Let me know in a recipe review or comment below. And if you have a question about the recipe or anything else in this post, drop that in the comments as well. Enjoy!