“I know,” I said. “But LOOK! Meat pies! In miniature!”

“There’s beef in there? Sure, I can get behind that.”

A few weeks ago I found these little cocotte dishes on clearance (similar to these mini Dutch ovens), and I couldn’t resist buying a few. I’d been eyeing mini cocottes for a while, ever since I saw these Le Creuset versions on sale at a kitchen store a few years ago.  I scoffed at them at first. “Mini cocottes are the cupcakes of the braising world,” I thought to myself. “It’s just a really small pot, much like a cupcake is just a really small cake.”

Well, picture me today, sitting humbly before you, eating a very large plate of crow. As it turns out, I can’t not paw at mini cocottes whenever I see them in a shop. And when my coveted bargain basement cocottes finally arrived — well, I spent a couple of nights in bed, staring at my ceiling, feverishly pondering as to what would be my first creation using them. As St. Patrick’s Day approached and my Facebook feed filled with adorable babies dressed in shamrock green along with gigantic shepard’s pies (thanks, friends, by the way, for being generally awesome with great food and producing very cute kids), it hit me: I would make handheld meat pies, and they would be glorious.

For my shepard’s pie, I used this Alton Brown recipe. Since I didn’t have ground lamb on hand and I didn’t have time to run to the store after my late-night revelation, I substituted ground beef. His recipe is enough to make ten miniature shepard’s pies — at least for me (although I did also make more potatoes than he did because we just love buttery mashed potatoes over here).

As it turns out, a small, four-inch cocotte holding golden-crisped mashed potatoes with a meaty filling is not really enough to satiate a hungry adult. I served some salad along with these mini pies, and I’d also recommend making this recipe for no more than six people so that hungry diners can have a second. The kids loved having their “own” little cocottes. Since I pulled them scorchingly hot straight from the oven and put them to cool on salad plates in front of each kid, we had a few touch-and-go minutes there while the hubby and I admonished them to “look but don’t touch.” (By the by, there is apparently no torture greater for Ge Ge than to put a hot meat pie in front of him and then tell him he can’t eat or touch it for like, three minutes.)

The cocottes eventually cooled, and the kids tore into each of theirs with aplomb, pulling out forkfuls of saucy ground beef, carrots, peas and corn. The combination of juicy meat and fluffy potatoes with a crunchy top was homey and filling. When cooked inside a single serving-sized cocotte, shepard’s pie somehow doesn’t feel as frumpy as if it’s cooked inside one large pan. Yet, by mixing potatoes and meat together into one tiny dish, it’s almost like you’re eating a complete meal with each and every bite. As soon as I polished off the contents of my cocotte, I was already thinking about what I could miniaturize next. Apple pies? Fondue? Osso bucco?

The possibilities are endless.

Note: I made some substitutions and modifications to Alton Brown’s recipe; the original is here.