Monica Schipper/Getty Images
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
Ree Drummond loves sharing easy meal ideas with her Food Network fans on “Pioneer Woman,” but not every recipe has been a hit over the years. In fact, there’s one recipe Drummond wishes she had passed on because the final product just wasn’t what she envisioned.
In her memoir “Frontier Follies: Adventures in Marriage and Motherhood in the Middle of Nowhere,” Drummond admits that her chicken strip pizza, or as she also called it, “fried chicken pizza,” was not good, calling it “my least-favorite recipe I ever filmed.” She said, “It was absolutely awful, but because it was the end of our last shoot day, we had to move forward with it. I figured it would look better on TV when it aired. I was wrong.”
To make matters worse, Food Network took a clip from the fried chicken pizza episode and shared it on Facebook. Now, Drummond’s biggest televised food mistake has been immortalized, with a whole comment section discussing the unique recipe and how it turned out (or didn’t turn out).
Here’s how Ree Drummond made fried chicken pizza
As she described it in “Frontier Follies,” The Pioneer Woman said, “I used frozen chicken strips and topped the pizza with coleslaw, pickles, and special sauce.” Several suggestions were made on Facebook for how it could have been better, like cutting the chicken tenders into bite-sized chunks.
Others pointed out that nothing was homemade, considering it was made with premade bread dough, store-bought chicken tenders, and bottled BBQ sauce. Still, it’s not a secret that Drummond will take shortcuts where necessary, especially with her bread dough.
For the slaw, she said in the video that she was going to “turn regular store-bought slaw into something special.” She did that by mixing in chipotle mayo with honey and lime zest and juice. After removing the pizza from the oven, Drummond spread the saucy slaw mixture over the melted cheese. Then, she placed whole, uncut chicken tenders on top of the slaw. From there, she sprinkled pickles and jalapeños across the top of the chicken and drizzled the whole pizza with the rest of her spicy slaw sauce.
More than 700 people took the time to comment on the video, and judging by their comments, the consensus was that the recipe was a hard pass. But everyone has a misstep sometimes. We still appreciate the 12 best lessons we’ve learned from Ree Drummond.
Dining and Cooking