Ree Drummond has built a reputation as one of Food Network’s most trusted home cooks, known for approachable comfort food and family-friendly recipes that actually work. After more than a decade on television, however, even “The Pioneer Woman” admits not every dish has been a hit. Drummond recently opened up about one recipe she wishes she had never shared.
Ree Drummond Reflects on Her Biggest On-Air Recipe Regret
Over the years, she has filmed hundreds of episodes and shared countless recipes, but one stands out for all the wrong reasons.
Drummond has been hosting “The Pioneer Woman” since 2011, adapting it from her wildly popular blog of the same name, which launched in 2006.
At a recent promotional event for her cookbook “The Pioneer Woman Cooks: The Essential Recipes,” Drummond, according to The Independent, recalled a chicken strip pizza that she now considers her biggest regret.
“The production company would come out five times a year,” she explained. “They would stay three weeks at a time and we would film eight episodes, about 40 shows a year.”
By the final episode of one particularly exhausting shoot, Drummond said everyone was racing against the clock.
“So the very last episode of the shoot, I had this idea that it would be really cool to do a chicken strip pizza,” she said.
The original vision was inspired by a fried chicken pizza she remembered from California Pizza Kitchen. “In my mind, I was going to make these little popcorn chicken nuggets and make a homemade crust,” she explained. Instead, time constraints forced her to take shortcuts.
“I wound up using frozen chicken strips and a ready-made crust,” Drummond admitted. “The chicken strips were way too big, and this pizza was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
She didn’t stop there.
“After I put the chicken strips on there, they just fell like bricks,” she said. “Then I inexplicably poured pickles over the top.”
Why ‘The Pioneer Woman’ Says Some Recipes Are Worth Leaving Behind
The chicken strip pizza wasn’t the only dish Drummond has publicly retired. In a past confession shared in The Pioneer Woman magazine, she revealed another culinary experiment she vowed never to repeat: green tea ice cream.
“I once made green tea ice cream for a ladies’ investment-club meeting back in the old days,” Drummond recalled. Instead of using matcha, she ground up green tea bags in a food processor and mixed them into the base.
“It wasn’t necessarily a disaster, but it looked like mossy green sludge,” she said. Despite her hopes, none of the guests touched it.
“There were about 23 bowls, and no one ate any of it,” she admitted.
The takeaway was simple. “I buy my green tea ice cream now,” Drummond joked.
Fans can catch Ree Drummond on “The Pioneer Woman” Saturday mornings on Food Network.
