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What does Ree Drummond do with her food?

Ree Drummond, also known as The Pioneer Woman, is famous for her delicious, down-home cooking. As a busy wife, mother, and restaurant owner living on a ranch in rural Oklahoma, Drummond has plenty of hungry mouths to feed on a regular basis. But what exactly does she do with all that delicious food she is constantly cooking up?

Cooking for her family

First and foremost, Drummond cooks for her family. She has a husband, Ladd, and four children – Alex, Paige, Bryce, and Todd. With a family of six to feed, Drummond is constantly in the kitchen whipping up meals. She has said she aims to have hearty, stick-to-your-ribs type meals on the table daily. Breakfast might be pancakes, eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns. Lunch could be soup and sandwiches. Dinner might be chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, and biscuits.

Drummond often cooks in large batches or makes double recipes so there are ample leftovers. With kids involved in various activities and a ranch to tend to, having leftovers on hand makes life easier when time is short. Casseroles, stews, pasta dishes, and soups are great for having leftovers. Drummond also relies on easy backup meals like tacos, nachos, pizza, or sandwiches on hectic days.

Cooking for her family is Drummond’s top priority when it comes to meal planning. While tasty food is a must, she also focuses on heartiness, affordability, and avoiding food waste.

Developing recipes

In addition to cooking for her own family, Drummond is continuously developing new recipes for her blog and cookbooks. She has published five cookbooks to date. Some of her recipe development is dependent on what ingredients she has on hand or what happens to be abundantly in season.

Drummond often thinks up recipe ideas based on her family’s requests for certain meals or dishes. Her kids are a great source of inspiration – if they mention loving a certain food, she usually whips up a recipe for the blog. Her husband, Ladd, also gives plenty of recipe requests and opinions as her official taste tester.

When developing recipes, Drummond cooks in smaller batches than she would for her family. This allows her to adjust seasoning and tweak techniques or ingredients during the trial and error process. Once she has finalized a recipe, she will cook it again in a larger batch as if she was feeding her whole family to make sure the measurements translate properly.

Feeding ranch hands and visitors

The Drummond family ranch has a number of ranch hands who work on the property daily. Whenever Drummond is cooking up a meal for her own family, she makes sure to prepare extra so that any hungry ranchhands can enjoy a plate too. Whether it’s hearty breakfasts, abundant sandwiches and sides at lunchtime, or dinners of steaks, chili, and potatoes, she loves being able to provide delicious, homecooked food for their hardworking staff.

Their ranch in Pawhuska, Oklahoma also attracts many visitors who come for tours or to visit the restaurant. Drummond often prepares snacks or light meals to share with guests when they stop by the main house on their ranch tours. Some examples are cookies, muffins, sausage rolls, or finger sandwiches.

Catering events

Drummond’s cooking skills have been put to good use for all kinds of events and gatherings in her community over the years. She frequently prepares food for potlucks, church events, school functions, and more. Some of her popular potluck contributions include brisket, meatballs, enchilada casserole, and side dishes like potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans, and macaroni and cheese.

She also caters events on their family ranch from time to time. This might be providing appetizers for a charity event, preparing and serving a plated dinner for a wedding, or putting together a taco/nacho buffet for a corporate retreat. Drummond enjoys the challenge of cooking for large crowds and making sure everyone is happily fed.

Running the Mercantile restaurant

One of the biggest food-related endeavors for Ree Drummond is running The Pioneer Woman Mercantile restaurant on her family’s ranch in Pawhuska. The Mercantile is open daily for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Drummond heads up the menu planning and recipe development for all dishes that are served at the restaurant. This includes comfort food favorites like chicken fried steak, biscuits and gravy, burgers, sandwiches, salads, soups, pastas, and desserts. Everything is made fresh in-house daily.

Here are some estimates of the quantities of food they produce at the Pioneer Woman Mercantile restaurant on a weekly basis:

Food Item Weekly Quantity
Biscuits 6,000
Beef for burgers 400 pounds
Chicken fried steak 300 steaks
Bacon 150 pounds
Pies and cakes 300 whole pies, 450 slices daily

As you can see, they go through staggering amounts of ingredients each week to keep their hungry customers happy! Managing her bustling restaurant kitchen keeps Ree Drummond extremely busy when it comes to churning out tasty food on the daily.

Catering film crews

Since her cooking show launched in 2008, Drummond has gotten used to catering for the television crews who come to her ranch for filming. Whether it’s breakfast for 20 hungry camera operators and set designers at the start of the day or serving up steak dinners for a wrap party, she handles it all.

Drummond says she enjoys being able to show her hospitality by feeding the hardworking crews. She also appreciates the chance to get feedback on her cooking. Some of her popular on-set meals include breakfast tacos and burritos, soups and salads for lunch, and pizza parties.

Donating extra food

With so much cooking going on daily at the Drummond ranch and restaurant, Ree is always confronted with excess food. While the family ranch hands and their own livestock help demolish leftovers, she still finds herself with excess produce from her garden, extra baked goods, and more.

To avoid wasting food and give back to others, Drummond makes an effort to donate edible excess food to those in need in the local community. Some of the places she donates to include:

  • Local food pantries
  • Homeless shelters
  • Women’s shelters
  • Soup kitchens
  • Youth programs
  • Senior centers

Whether it’s pies, cookies, bread, or produce, Drummond enjoys being able to share extras with others who could use a delicious, homecooked meal.

Freezer meals

Freezer meals are a major timesaver for Drummond. When she is cooking large batches of soups, stews, chili, casseroles, or other dishes, she always designates some portions for the freezer.

Having a stocked freezer of homemade frozen meals is invaluable during busy weeks. It prevents the need to rely on expensive takeout on nights when there’s no time to cook. Her freezer contains an assortment of labeled meal bags and containers just waiting to be thawed and heated.

Drummond also often prepares freezer meal kits for her kids to use when they are away at college. This allows them to enjoy wholesome homemade cooking while living on their own. Some freezer meal recipes she relies on include:

  • Lasagna
  • Pot pie
  • Chili
  • Turkey or chicken tetrazzini
  • Breakfast burritos
  • Chicken pot pie
  • Beef stew
  • Green chile chicken enchiladas

Cooking segments for her show

A primary way that Drummond utilizes food is creating enticing cooking segments for her television show. Each episode features Ree cooking up recipes from start to finish to demonstrate for viewers. This means preparing dishes that look appealing on camera and hold up under hot lighting.

To accommodate filming, Drummond often doubles recipes she is making and uses duplicate ingredients. This allows the director to get different angles and shots of the recipes. It also provides plenty of delicious finished dishes for enjoying and sharing after the segment wraps.

Here are some behind-the-scenes facts about cooking on camera:

  • Recipes are chosen based on seasonal ingredients and viewer requests
  • Recipes need to have visual appeal for the camera
  • Dishes may sit under hot lights for an hour or more during filming
  • Ree cooks entire recipes from start to finish multiple times
  • Recipes are often doubled to have backup food for shots

Cooking for television allows Drummond to showcase her recipes for her show’s millions of viewers in a beautifully produced format. Of course, eating the end results is just a bonus for Ree and her lucky coworkers!

Writing cookbooks

Ree Drummond has parlayed her cooking success into a bestselling cookbook empire. She has published five celebrated cookbooks to date. When working on cookbooks, Drummond spends months developing and testing dozens of recipe ideas.

Once she has narrowed down her recipe choices, she cooks each one multiple times to perfect the instructions and get the dish just right for photographs. The cookbook process involves making each recipe in very small batches as well as larger batches to check for consistent results.

Drummond often recruits her family for taste testing recipe attempts during cookbook development. She tweaks recipes based on their feedback before deeming dishes ready for publication. Here is an overview of Drummond’s cookbook career so far:

Cookbook Title Year Published Number of Recipes
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl 2009 120
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier 2012 112
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays 2013 125
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime 2015 104
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Come and Get It! 2017 120

Drummond enjoys the cookbook creation process, even though it involves seemingly endless rounds of cooking and cleaning up!

Conclusion

As you can see, Ree Drummond keeps extremely busy feeding the many people around her through everyday family meals, special events, her restaurant, filming, and cookbooks. While cooking at such high volumes is hard work, Drummond clearly has a passion for providing delicious food with love. Her happy family, staff, and customers get to enjoy the fruits of her labor on a daily basis.