The Pioneer Woman Review: "Feeding Cows, Feeding Cowboys"

This episode featured a big day of feeding cows and feeding cowboys on the Drummond Ranch. The kids are feeding the bottle calves, the ranchers are feeding the cattle, and Ree is going to be feeding the cowboys.

Ree is getting the feeding day started with some French Breakfast Puffs. It turns out, Ree has been making these puffs ever since her High School French class, after receiving the recipe from her French teacher. It's safe to say this recipe is a keeper seeing as how it's been in the rotation for a while.

These little puffs are sweet and portable. Ree gets them started with flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. To her mixer bowl, she adds some shortening and sugar. In go some eggs, the dry ingredients and a bit of milk. Ree uses a large cookie scoop to portion out the French Breakfast Puff dough, which is actually quite similar to a muffin.

The difference is, after they come out of the oven, these little puffs get dunked into melted butter and then rolled in a cinnamon sugar mixture. When all is said and done, these look like giant cinnamon sugar donuts. Yes, please!

For lunch, the cowboys will be feeding on juicy, Drippy French Dip Sandwiches. I think some people forget how special a sandwich recipe can be. These French Dip Sandwiches are definitely fit for kings - and cowboys. For the meat, Ree starts by making a dry rub of salt, pepper, thyme, and ground oregano. This rub gets rubbed into a huge beef roast and allowed to mellow in the fridge overnight.

In the morning, Ree places the meat on a rack in a roasting pan then roasts the meat until it's medium rare. She pours off most of the grease from the bottom of the pan and then sautees up some onions until they are golden and caramelized. Her caramelized onions are a thing of beauty. She then begins to build the au jus dipping sauce.

Some of the ingredients seem right on point to me - beef consume, pepper, and sherry wine. Then she throws in a couple of things that I'm not so sure about - soy sauce and a package of French Onion Soup mix. The soup mix seems particularly unnecessary, because she is starting with beef drippings, fresh onions and other spices. Wouldn't those ingredients get you the desired flavors of a soup mix packet? It's just that the piece of beef she roasted looks amazing, and I would be hesitant to mess it up with packaged onion soup mix. In fact, I think I'll give this a try minus the soup mix and see how it goes.

To finish these sandwiches, Ree strains the au jus mixture so that she's left with a clear, but richly colored au jus. After slicing the beef, she dunks the pieces of meat into the au jus, piles it onto buttered, toasted rolls and tops the whole thing off with some cheese. The cheese melts instantly and these sandwiches turn into a drippy, succulent feast.

For dessert, Ree is making Baked Fudge. While I've heard of microwave fudge, baked fudge is new to me. In a mixer, Ree beats together eggs, sugar, cocoa powder, flour, vanilla extract and (of course) butter. Ree pulls out her trusty cookie scoop again and divides the fudge batter into large ramekins to create individual desserts.

The ramekins get baked in a water bath until the edges are crispy and the inside is soft and gooey. A truly decadent dessert. Ree serves up these luscious chocolatey treats with a melty scoop of French vanilla ice cream. I will definitely be adding this Baked Fudge to my fudge recipes.

After watching this dessert recipe, it seems that all of these recipes had a 'French' twist. French breakfast puffs, French Dip Sandwiches and Baked Fudge served with French Vanilla Ice Cream! So really, it was a French Feeding Day. I'm more than okay what that. These dessert recipes look like keepers and have put me in the mood for some feeding. French feeding, that is.

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