The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl

By Ree Drummond

Paula Deen meets Erma Bombeck in The Pioneer Woman Cooks, Ree Drummond’s spirited, homespun cookbook. Drummond colorfully traces her transition from city life to ranch wife through recipes, photos, and pithy commentary based on her popular, award-winning blog, Confessions of a Pioneer Woman, and whips up delicious, satisfying meals for cowboys and cowgirls alike made from simple, widely available ingredients. The Pioneer Woman Cooks—and with these “Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl,” she pleases the palate and tickles the funny bone at the same time. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jun 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780061959820

Ree Drummond

Ree Drummond is the author of eight New York Times bestselling cookbooks in the Pioneer Woman Cooks series, the New York Times bestsellers Frontier Follies and The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, and many bestselling children’s books. Her award-winning website, The Pioneer Woman, was founded in 2006, and her top-rated cooking show, The Pioneer Woman, premiered on Food Network in 2011. In the years that followed, Ree launched The Pioneer Woman Magazine, a well-loved line of kitchen and home products at Walmart, and a restaurant, bakery, store, and other businesses in her hometown of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. She lives on a working ranch with her husband, Ladd, and her adult kids, sons-in-law, and new granddaughter all come home for family meals whenever they can!

Book preview

STARTERS

BBQ JALAPEÑO POPPERS

Makes 36 Poppers

There are many different versions of these delightful pop-in-your-mouth jalapeños. My sister-in-law Missy makes a more basic version, stuffing jalapeño halves with plain cream cheese, wrapping them with bacon, and baking them slowly for half an hour or so. When she’s feeling particularly mischievous, Missy cooks them on the grill. Either way, they’re a real treat. Here’s my spin on the old classic.

IMPORTANT: Wear gloves when working with fresh jalapeños or you’ll curse the ground on which I walk because you’ll wake up in the middle of the night with throbbing fingertips. And that’s nothing compared to what happens if you accidentally scratch your eye—or worse, something else.

18 fresh jalapeños

One 8-ounce package cream cheese

½ cup grated cheddar cheese

1 green onion, sliced

18 slices thin bacon, cut into halves

Bottled barbecue sauce

Toothpicks

Rubber gloves (or plastic bags) for working with jalapeños

1. Preheat the oven to 275ºF.

2. Begin by cutting jalapeños in half lengthwise (see warning in headnote). Try to keep the stems intact. They look prettier that way.

3. With a spoon, scrape out the seeds and light-colored membranes. Remember: The heat comes from the seeds and membranes, so if you can handle the sizzle, leave some of them intact.

4. Now, in a bowl, combine the cream cheese, cheddar cheese, and chopped green onion. Mix the ingredients together gently. And don’t feel you have to use an electric mixer. I do because I’m lazy and don’t like to exert myself. Ever.

(Too much scrubbing clothes on the washboard, I suppose.)

5. Next, stuff each hollowed jalapeño half with the cheese mixture.

6. Wrap bacon slices around each half, covering as much of the surface as you can. Be careful not to stretch the bacon too tightly around the jalapeño, as the bacon will contract as it cooks.

7. Brush the surface of the bacon with your favorite barbecue sauce. Chutney or apricot jelly works well, too!

8. Secure the jalapeños with toothpicks and pop them in the oven for 1 hour, or until the bacon is sizzling.

9. Serve hot or at room temperature, and watch them disappear within seconds. I’ve seriously caught guests stuffing these into their purses. Sometimes I have to call law enforcement.

HELPFUL HINTS: Make three times more than you think you’ll need. (You’ll just have to trust me.)

Poppers can be assembled up to a day ahead of time and kept in the fridge before cooking. Or, they can be fully cooked and frozen in plastic bags until you need them. Just thaw and warm up in the oven before serving.

Unless you’re prepared to become instantly addicted, do not place two of these on your hamburger. I mean it. Don’t. There’ll be no turning back after that.

Variations

• For a simpler version, omit the cheddar and green onion from the cream cheese.

• Cut sliced peaches or pineapple into small bits and press them into the cream cheese before wrapping the jalapeños in bacon.

• Use Pepper Jack cheese in place of the cheddar cheese

PICO DE GALLO

Pico de gallo should be sainted. The freshness of tomatoes, the clean flavor of cilantro, the cool, crisp wonderfulness of it all. I just couldn’t get by without it.

I used to have trouble making pico de gallo. For the longest time I mistakenly assumed that tomatoes were its chief ingredient, and the rest of the elements—onions, jalapeños, and cilantro—were just there to inject subtle flavor. Whenever I’d try to make pico de gallo, it usually went something like this: Chop a whole bunch of tomato. Add a tiny bit of onion, a couple of spoons of chopped cilantro, a teeny-tiny spoonful of fresh jalapeño, a bunch of lime juice, and a ton of salt. And it wasn’t good. Ever. And I’d cry over my tortilla chips. Oh, how I’d cry over my tortilla chips.

Fortunately, I met Ana. Oh, is Ana ever divine. She lets me practice my horrendous Spanish on her and she giggles at everything I say. Most important, she makes the most wickedly delicious Mexican food I’ve ever had, not the least of which is absolutely perfect pico de gallo.

Here’s the most important thing I learned from Ana: tomatoes are only one aspect of pico de gallo. The jalapeños, cilantro, and onions all require equal billing with the tomatoes to make pico de gallo work. Once I learned this important truth, I hit the ground running and haven’t stopped making pico de gallo since. It has replaced ketchup as the most popular condiment on the ranch.

I make up a couple of big bowls of pico de gallo every week, and I never run out of uses for it. On hot summer days when Marlboro Man returns from working cattle, sometimes a bowl of pico de gallo and tortilla chips is all he wants. It’s cool and satisfying, and usually tides him over till dinner. In addition, I use pico de gallo in any number of dishes I cook: with tacos, inside quesadillas, atop grilled chicken or a bowl of pinto beans—its versatility is endless, and it gives me a great excuse to plant way too many tomatoes every year.

1. Dice up the onions. I like to keep things pretty fine so the pico de gallo will be more palatable to folks who don’t like large chunks of onion and tomato.

2. Next, dice up an amount of tomatoes equal in quantity to the onions.

3. And grab a bunch of cilantro equal in quantity to the tomatoes and chop it up pretty finely.

4. Now, slice 1 or 2 jalapeños in half (see warning about jalapeños in the headnote on Starters). With a spoon, scrape out the seeds. (If you like things spicy, leave in some of the white membranes.)

5. Dice the jalapeño very finely; you want a hint of heat and jalapeño flavor, but you don’t want to cause any fires.

6. Now dump the four ingredients into a bowl. Notice that there’s an equal quantity of onion, tomato, and cilantro. This is the secret of perfect pico de gallo!

7. Slice a lime in half and squeeze the juice from half a lime into the bowl.

8. Sprinkle with salt, and stir together until combined. Be sure to taste the pico de gallo and adjust the seasonings, adding salt or more diced jalapeño if needed. (I always taste it with chips so the salt quantity is factored in.)

Then, do what I do: Repeat this process every day. Soon, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Pico de gallo won’t keep very long in the fridge—probably 24 hours or so. After that, the sugars start to break down and it turns into a soupy mess. So it’s best to make it the same day you’ll want to serve it, though you certainly could do so several hours before.

’MATERS

The best thing ever to happen to my vegetable garden has been my two boys, who approach harvesting and picking with all the intensity and gusto they use to take apart the lawn mower: they don’t stop until it’s all done. And so, toward the end of the summer I’m gifted every few days with a large box of ripe tomatoes. . .or jalapeños. . .or green peppers. . .or whatever vegetable has reached its peak. I haven’t picked a vegetable myself in ages. My fingernails are cleaner than they’ve been in years.

Surprisingly, it didn’t take much training to get my youngsters to understand that you actually have to leave the fruit on the vine longer than two days for it to be of use to anybody. And aside from the occasional inch-long zucchini and a few handfuls of green tomatoes the size of peas, they practice an unexpected amount of patience.

THE GREAT TEARDROP TOMATO CATASTROPHE

A few years ago, my tomato garden ambition had reached an all-time high. I had a few years of semi-successful vegetable gardening under my belt, and was ready to take it all the way. I envisioned rows and rows of huge beefsteak tomatoes, enormous heirlooms, flavorful cherry tomatoes, and of course, Roma tomatoes for an endless supply of pico de gallo. I’d be the envy of all my neighbors, if I had neighbors, and I’d be the ranch lady who was always bringing baskets of tomatoes to her friends. . .if I had friends.

I primed my garden late that spring and set off to buy my tomato plants at my favorite local nursery. By late afternoon I returned home with no fewer than thirty tomato plants representing eight different varieties. I couldn’t wait for my bounty to bear fruit.

It would bear fruit, all right—tiny, yellow teardrop-shaped fruit. Evidently, due to a massive error at the regional supplier, an entire truckload of tomato plants had been mis-marked. The result was a garden full of tomato plants bearing nothing but small yellow teardrop tomatoes. I watched in horror every day as more and more yellow teardrops appeared. And it figured that these particular plants would wind up being the healthiest, most prolific ones I’d ever seen. I went to bed at night and dreamed of drowning in teardrop tomatoes. I wouldn’t see a single red tomato all season.

From that day forward, I learned to spread myself out more, collecting different tomato plants from a handful of different nurseries. A girl can only think of so many uses for yellow tomatoes the size of grapes.

GUACAMOLE

Makes ½ cup per avocado used

If you have my favorite condiment, pico de gallo, lying around, all you need is an avocado and you have the makings of my second favorite condiment: guacamole.

Don’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you: for the longest time, when I made pico de gallo (Starters) and guacamole, I treated them as two entirely separate dishes, meaning I’d chop all the tomatoes, onions, and cilantro for the pico de gallo. Then I’d turn around and do the same thing for the guacamole. And then the lights went on.

Sometimes it takes me a while.

One day I had the brilliant idea to mash up several avocados and sprinkle them with salt, then simply dump on a big mound of freshly made pico de gallo and mix it in. It was a culinary revelation of epic proportions, and I’ve made it that way ever since. And you can make it as smooth or as lumpy—as plain or as chunky—as you like. I happen to like my guacamole loaded—with lots and lots of bites of tomato and onion, and big cilantro flavor.

Begin with as many avocados as you’d like. Because I’m an avocado freak, I like to allow three-quarters to one whole avocado per person. But I’m a little excessive that

Reviews for The Pioneer Woman Cooks

[mchwest · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved the story behind this cookbook, and how she adds flare and flavor to her husband and ranchers meals as well as cooking healthy for her children! Immediately tried the recipe for her Pico De Gallo, changed it up a bit for my taste and it is fabulous. Believe me, it is so nice to read about her adventures and then go back to the book for more recipes in the future.

[tfs93 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lovely photographs! It was interesting to see what "The Marlboro Man" actually looked like! This book is filled with easy to follow recipes and country wisdom!.

[booksandbutter · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of my favorite cookbooks! I love her style and the photos for each recipe. I have been addicted to her blog for over a year and now I can have her in my kitchen with out my computer! I love it, Ree never lets me down in the kitchen! Her recipes are some of our family's favorites!

[mrswomackslibrary · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a great cookbook full of yummy comfort food meals; however, it's probably not for you if you're trying to eat healthy! Many of the recipes feature a substantial amount of cream and butter, which add to their resulting deliciousness. Part of the appeal of the book is that the recipes call for mostly ordinary ingredients, meaning nothing that you would have to go to a specialty store to hunt down. The author also includes entertaining tales from her life on an Oklahoma ranch, as well as beautiful photographs and illustrations. She has also designed the cookbook to be in a step by step format for each recipe, featuring photos of each step. Very helpful for the average cook!

[jenreidreads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

So far, I've made the meatloaf and the cinnamon rolls, and they were both delicious!

[sarah1e · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The pictures are beautiful. The stories are wonderful. This is a great book, for fans of Ree's blog or for anyone who collects cookbooks. The recipes in this book are not the greatest - this has been my problem with Ree's website as well. If you read through it first, prepare to use every dish and utensil in your kitchen, and grow 3 more hands, you'll be ready to tackle some of the dishes. I love the book - it's made a great gift multiple times and it's always fun to look through.

[oreillynsf_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ree Drummond is amazing. As a storyteller, cook, photographer, and it appears wife and mother. If you've never checked out her Pioneer Woman blog, you owe it to yourself to give it a click. And if you like what you see, you will love this cookbook, which combines her passions for food, family and fotos in a marvelous compendium that is as much story as collection of recipes. .

[carma91 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've been a fan of Ree's blog for a while, so when I found out that she was going to have a cook book over her recipes, plus some of her photography, I was excited and I knew I'd have to at least check it out. I ended up getting it for Christmas, and I'm really glad that I have it! It's a nice hard cover, which is nice. One thing I really love about the recipes are all of the pictures. I love being able to see what the food looks like, and she goes so beyond that by having pictures for every step so you know if you're on the right track. The humorous comments in the instructions are nice too. Before I had gotten the book, I had already made lots of recipes from her blog so I can tell you that her recipes are really good (even though they might not always be the healthiest, haha). Basically, it's a very nice, entertaining cookbook with lots of good recipes.

[ashleyemdash · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed going through the Pioneer Woman cookbook. I am a fan of cookbooks in general. I was not a reader of Ree Drummond's blog - so everything was new to me.

I appreciated that this was a cookbook/biography/photobook, and I think that really added a lot to the type of cooking done in the book. There are few of us in such demanding lines of work who would be able to eat the recipes in the book on a regular basis. Having the extra content makes the book a very good investment and adds some fun reading time over the time that would be spent looking at the pictures and getting a handle on the recipes.

The recipes are VERY rich in terms of calories and fat, and they would require a good deal of monetary resources to prepare (sticks of butter are .60 a piece around here alone!). Still, the food is tasty homestyle cooking, so any of the dishes would be a great option for a treat night or breakfast.

[cubsfan3410 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed the recipes, stories and photos in this book!

[kmajort · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

She's cute. Nice website too, impressive how far someone can go just writing about ranch life, food & homeschooling.
Very good photographer.
I think I'd like to meet this chick.

Yummy recipes, about as far from Vegan or Lo-Fat as is possible... but who cares?!

[vonze-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I bought this as a Christmas gift for a family member, and decided to read over it before wrapping. I'm a novice to cooking shows and blogs, however I enjoyed reading about Ree Drummond's life. Through her stories and photos, the book feels not only like a cookbook, but also a letter from a friend.

A lot of the recipes have a tex-mex style. There's a little something for everyone, from healthy corn salad, to baked goods. If she hasn't done so already, I'd love for her to create a cookbook of her former city girl vegan recipes. She stresses that her family would never eat them, but the rest of us might!

[murderbydeath · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful cookbook with fabulous photographs and a lot of recipes that sound like a lot of fun to try. I'm looking forward to trying quite a few of them the near future

[pixiestyx77 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've been following her blog for ages. Love having a lot of the recipes that I've been meaning to try in one place & love the step-by-step photos. A lot of the recipes are on the "heavy" side, so it's not an everyday book. It's great when you want good comfort food though!

[wwrawson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This cookbook was good, but I think I prefer the PW blog. For some reason in blog form the combination of ranch stories and recipes (with fabulous photos) works better.

[kdrummond66 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Read it, now I am going to cook my way through it!

[cee2_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read cookbooks, even when they aren't as much fun as Ree Drummond's. Her writing, photographic and cooking skills add up to one enjoyable feast. The anecdotes about her family and ranch life are amusing and endearing. The photographs range from cute ("tough" ranch kids) to sublime (sunrise silhouettes of her family and ranch crew on horseback).
The recipes are all things I would like to try and mostly use ingredients that I have on hand. The photographs for the recipes are plentiful and lead you through the steps. It's helpful to see what it looks like along the way, as well as seeing the finished dish. I made the cobbler recipe for a dessert night with my parents because I had fresh picked raspberries and we all loved it. Though I've put myself on a strict book purchasing diet, I may have to buy this one.

[ehaberlin_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I adore her recipes. They are all delicious, but they're deadly. Save her food for a special occasion. It's rich, delicious, and calorific.

This book is beautifully put together and entertains as well as informs.

[dreams_ark · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This looks like fun.

[bermudaonion_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you’re not familiar with The Pioneer Woman, you need to be! This woman is amazing! She’s a ranch wife and manages to maintain an amazing blog, homeschool four kids, take gorgeous pictures and create a beautiful cookbook.

I was mesmerized by The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond when I got it. In this wonderful cookbook Ree explains how she became The Pioneer Woman, shows a little of ranch life and shares some of her great recipes. The beauty of the recipes is that they’re created from simple ingredients that anyone can find and they’re for dishes your family will really eat. Both Carl and I found lots of recipes that we want to try – sour cream pancakes, Marlboro Man’s favorite sandwich, spicy pulled pork, macaroni and cheese, comfort meatballs, just to name a few. There are only one or two recipes in here that don’t appeal to either one of us.

One of the great things about the recipes in The Pioneer Woman Cooks is all of the pictures – there is a photograph for each step of the recipe. Because of this, I think this cookbook would be great for beginning as well as experienced cooks. Oh, and did I mention that Ree took all of the photographs in this book herself? I was amazed.

Since cheese and olives are the two basic food groups and this recipe looked easy, I decided to fix Olive Cheese Bread first, and I have to tell you this recipe is to die for.

[cemming_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you've followed her blog as I have, you'll be pleased to find that author Ree Drummond sticks to her characteristic mix of wry humor and butter by the pound. I'm glad. It's been working for her. In The Pioneer Woman Cooks, her cookbook slash photographic memoir, Ree brings to life the story of her city upbringing with her farm woman reality, currently wrangling four kids and a husband on a working cattle ranch in Oklahoma. Mesmerizing photographs of family members, get-togethers and muddy farm work blend well with humorous anecdotes — and serve to show you why her family is so hungry!

Cute, ranch-laden, photo-intense asides with amusing anecdotes leave you longing for a house on the prairie in a way that 'Little House on the Prairie' episodes never did. Miss Mustang International, my favorite of these sections, showcases the farm's haughtiest mares, snobby and cool as horses can be, deadlocked in imaginary pageantry.

What apparently didn't work was the step-by-step visual instructions Ree compiles for each recipe. Drummond's gorgeous pix can be viewed on her website, and it's this stunning photography that leaves viewers drooling for more. Normally. In this publication, however, her photos fall flat. Whether an error in photo correction or on press, it's a sad reality that the green tint of the tutorial pictures makes the food less than appetizing. (Let's flag this for correction on the second printing, Harper Collins. You're far too professional for this type of error. Unless it's just my copy. Hmm.)

Now I bought the book despite its meat-centered mains partly to support a fellow blogger, but mostly because Drummond's recipes can be counted upon to work. This is turning out to be a rare feat in cookbookery. For obvious reasons, I won't comment on the chicken-fried steak or meatloaf recipes, sticking instead to ones I've already tried.

PW's Creamy Mashed Potatoes: killer Thanksgiving staple.
Maple Pecan Scones: get this, already made them three times.
Cinnamon Rolls: yum.
Migas: delectable, eggy nachos. I know, right?
Egg in the Hole: something I've made before, but the extra butter does make it better. Like two days in row better.

And I've only had the book for two weeks. In short, Drummond's pithy writing style and remarkable large-scale photography make this book almost as much a coffee table item as a kitchen resource. If you like having cookbooks you can rely on with unfussy authors you'd ask over for lunch, pick up The Pioneer Woman Cooks. You won't be disappointed, especially if you like butter as much as I do.