Ree Drummond on Food, Life, and Family

Celebrity chefs enter our living room, mobile phones, and kitchens through their cooking shows, kitchen and food products, and cookbooks. This is the third post of a three-part series where we share what we’ve learned from studying celebrity chefs. There’s cooking. There’s life. There’s family. In The Pioneer Woman, Ree narrates and simultaneously lives out her role as cattle rancher wife, mother of four, and city girl who tells her “black heels to tractor wheels” story on her Food Network cooking show.

Food, Life, and Family Tips from Ree

1. Rise early, like really early. Ree gets up before dawn. While getting up early matches the schedule of her cattle ranching husband, Ree finds great joy in the sunrise. And, waking up early gives her time to prepare for tv shoots, write one of her bestselling cookbooks, take photos for her blog, and start new projects, like a magazine!
2. Pray. Ree begins each morning with the reading of Psalms.
3. Frozen fruit is perfect in crisps because it bakes down and you don’t have to worry about it being in season. Frozen cherries are tossed with cherries and almond extract and baked in a cherry almond crisp. Or, frozen peaches bake perfectly in peach cobbler.
4. Tailgating is for real in the country. Ree brings food out to the working cowboys and sets up it up on the truck bed.
5. Glaze steaks with butter.

   

6. Love your pets! Ree has many dogs, including the beloved Charlie, a basset hound and hero of her children’s books.
7. Love your iron skillet. Ree makes sauces, cooks cornbread, bakes biscuits, and sautes vegetables in her iron skillet.

   

8. Transform favorites by changing the presentation. Salad on a stick, cocktails in cake form, Hawaiian burgers,and wafflemaker hash browns.
9. Always grate your own cheese. “I love shortcuts in the kitchen. But, store-bought grated cheese is not one of them. It’s against my religion.”

   

10. Canned and frozen fruit are real time savers for fruit pies and turnovers.
11. Try freshly grated nutmeg in your recipes. “It’s a must in your life,” says Ree.
12. Use a pastry cutter to work butter into dough, such as a flour-sugar mixture for cherry crisp.
13. Personalize your kitchen equipment. Ree’s stand mixer is customized with country flowers painted over a light blue base.

    

14. Butter, half and half, and cream are lovely sights.
15. Use alcohol in cooking. Add tequila in a marinade to flavor and tenderize chicken. Vodka adds depth to tomato sauce for a penne dish. Brandy adds a rich, deep flavor to cream pink peppercorn sauce to drizzle over steak.

    

16. Cook with friends. The perfect Caesar salad dressing evolved from Ree and her best friend Hyacinth taking turns tweaking the recipe.
17. Squeeze lemon juice by holding your hand underneath to catch the seeds.
18. Mason jars are ideal salad-dressing jars. Just add the dressing ingredients, shake, and store in the jar.
19. Rinse beans to improve flavor and remove grit.
20. Make cilantro and parsley your go-to herbs for fresh flavor and color.

    

21. Give food gifts. Ree makes and delivers food to family and friends during the holidays, including her famous cinnamon rolls for Christmas and hot cross buns for Easter.
22. Teach children how to cook. Ree teaches her kids how to make jam, roast asparagus, decorate cookies, and build ice cream sundaes.
23. A long table encourages conversation for meals with family and with friends.

    

24. Think of your life goals, your to-do list, while kneading dough, working in butter, or stirring caramelized onions.
25. Get help. Ree hired two managers to oversee the building construction of her store The Mercantile. Ree had her friends help taste test recipes for the new deli menu. And thank them with food during the meetings!
26. Have your man do the grilling and carving. Ladd grills steaks for the family, for parties, and carves the holiday birds and meats for the holidays.

    

27. Involve your children with chores, from cattle ranching to delivering cinnamon rolls to frothing up milk as a barista at The Mercantile deli. They learn leadership and service.
28. Admire your husband. Ree often refers to Ladd in affectionate terms: “my strapping husband,” “my cowboy husband”
29. Encourage children to play sports. They will always be hungry and eat anything you serve.
30. Laugh often. Ree is always smiling and laughing.
31. Joke about yourself.

    

32. Have picnics outside, whether it’s a perfect picnic lunch with girlfriends, a snack of Prairie Sushi (tortilla roll-ups with turkey, cucumber, and cream cheese) for your daughter and friends after horseback riding, or Mexican fiesta dinner with family and friends.