Use Up Leftover Roast Beef By Making Baked Potatoes Into A Hearty Comfort Dish

When going to the effort of roasting a nice piece of beef, it is always worth it to make a lot. Straight out of the oven it is excellent, and whatever isn't eaten that first night makes an excellent dinner the next day as well. But when the palate begins to tire of eating the same meal day after day, that remaining meat needs a new angle. With just a few additional ingredients and not much work at all, depending on how it's put together, those leftovers can find new life in a hearty comfort dish. This meal, drawing inspiration from a shepherd's pie and cottage pie, combines roast beef with baked potatoes.

What we are suggesting here is not simply to use the leftover roast in a cottage pie. Instead, you can take a creative angle on that traditional dish and use the beef as a filling for baked potatoes. The leftovers are already cooked, so it is more than just thrifty, it is also a time saver. There are multiple ways to do this, but the first step for all of them is to make a gravy.

On its own, roast beef, particularly of the leftover variety, can be quite dry, as are baked potatoes. Making a quick gravy will provide all the moisture that this dish needs, and it can be as simple as opening a packet of good powdered gravy mix and stirring in the chopped meat and a few frozen peas and carrots. The more adventurous cooks out there can make gravy from scratch, but for a meal put together with leftovers like this, there's no shame in choosing the simplest method.

Once the beef is nice and saucy, the question arrives of how to add it to the potatoes. There are really a couple of options here. The easier of the two is to simply bake the potatoes to perfection, split them down the middle, and ladle the gravy over the top, for some beefy English jacket potatoes. Again, those interested in trading a bit of time in the kitchen for a more stunning meal can add a touch more elegance in the preparation. That same gravy can be packed into the potato halves themselves and covered with a nice layer of mash, to make fluffy cottage pie baked potatoes. In this case, the dish is essentially cottage pie writ small, with each twice-baked potato half serving as its own tiny baking dish.

Both of these preparations provide an ideal way to use up that leftover roast beef. The amount of effort going into the meal is in your hands. It can be as simple as a few pantry ingredients or as stylish as a single-serving cottage pie disguised as a run-of-the-mill baked potato.