Weekend Cooking: The Pioneer Woman Cooks Super Easy! by Ree Drummond

For years, I've had a love-neutral relationship with Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman. I loved following her success in growing her blog into a household name, establishing a television presence, and building a mini-empire. I love that her recipes are amazingly reliable, but I hit a stumbling block because she and I have different ways of cooking and eating. Still, when I was offered the chance to review her new cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks Super Easy, I knew I wanted to take a look. Thanks so much to William Morrow for the review copy. All thoughts are my honest opinion.

The theme of Drummond's new book is summed up in the subtitle: "120 Shortcut Recipes for Dinners, Desserts, and More." As she writes in the introductory sections, Drummond's life has become busier as her family grows and her professional responsibilities increase. She's given herself permission to use shortcuts and to embrace prepared ingredients because "that means more time hanging with your family, gardening, reading, or taking selfies with your dogs."

So what are some those ingredients? Bagged salad greens, bottled dressings and sauces, canned beans and tomato products, baking mixes, frozen doughs, dried and refrigerated pasta, bakery breads, and boxed stocks and broths. So, for example, instead of making her own pesto, she's happy to use a good-quality sauce from the grocery. She hasn't gone 100% processed foods, though, as I saw at least five recipes for homemade salad dressing. On the other hand, her shrimp and ramen soup uses frozen cooked shrimp, bottled Thai chili sauce, store-bought vegetable broth, inexpensive dried ramen noodles, and frozen vegetables.

I found quite a few recipes that caught my eye. Some I'll use simply for inspiration, like her entire salad chapter. Others I plan to make pretty much as is, like the broccoli-cheese stromboli (see scan), sheet-pan gnocchi (see video), baked risotto, chicken with mustard herb sauce, teriyaki chicken sheet pan supper, enchiladas two ways, and chorizo burgers. One of the several recipes I've already tried is Taco Shells and Cheese, which is essentially taco meat mixed into pasta and topped with sour cream and salsa. Yum!

Several recipes in the dessert chapter called to me, including a quick fruit galette, which uses premade pie crusts from the grocery store. I'm dying to try her mug cakes: you mix the ingredients for a single-serving cake right in the mug and then microwave to bake. They look fantastic and perfect for those times when you just want a little something in the evening.

Recommendation: Ree Drummond's The Pioneer Woman Cooks Super Easy would make a great gift to a whole host of cooks: those looking for shortcuts, those just learning to cook, those who are too busy to make each ingredient from scratch, and those who cook in RVs or vacation houses, and college students. Is it healthier to avoid box mixes and prepared sauces? Sure. Is it always realistic to spend a couple hours cooking each day? No. This cookbook celebrates the easy.

Here's a short video of Ree Drummond making two sheet-pan recipes on The Today Show

Note: The scans and video clip are used in the context of a review; all rights remain with the original copyright holders.

Shared with Weekend Cooking, hosted by Marg at The Intrepid Reader (and Baker)