Pioneer Woman Review: "Breakfast Delivery"

It's all about breakfast this week on the Drummond Ranch, and Ree is whipping up a colossal sized meal (are her meals ever small?) to get the morning going. The ranch crew are working cattle and will be getting their breakfast delivered out in the fields.

Think 'breakfast in bed' with a lot more dirt, sweat and cattle.

One of my favorite aspects of this show is how the film crew captures life on the Drummond Ranch. Obviously, their goal is to portray the ranch as a gorgeous, picturesque setting and to that point, they most definitely succeed. Another thing the film crew captures, however, is the relationship of the various Drummond family members.

The Drummond kids, and adults alike, are obviously hard working as well as members of a loving family. The kids could be caught on camera complaining or whining about the daily, repetitive work, but they genuinely seem to enjoy it. Even Bryce, the oldest boy, stands proud next to his horse (before dawn) and says how much he loves getting up early. I believe him, too, and I can see why Ree wants to deliver these guys breakfast in the pasture.

Speaking of breakfast, Ree kicks things off with The Best Breakfast Potatoes Ever. I feel like that is a challenge waiting to be tested. I've had some pretty good potato recipes before, but the way she adds large pieces of onion and garlic to her oven potatoes, these truly may be the best. To the potatoes, onions and garlic Ree adds some chopped bell pepper then coats the potatoes with butter and oil before sprinkling the entire batch with salt and pepper. She spreads the mixture onto rimmed baking sheets and pops them in the oven. Looks easy enough, and maybe they truly are the best.

Next up are Ree's Black Pepper and Sage Biscuits. These start out with flour, baking soda, salt and powdered milk. Powdered milk is something you don't always see in biscuit dough, but Ree swears it adds a little something to the texture of the biscuits. Precise measuring doesn't appear to be an issue with this recipe, because Ree adds heaping tablespoons and heaping cups of various ingredients into the bowl.

It's refreshing not having a stressful baking recipe. Ree adds a generous amount of black pepper and sage to the dry ingredients and then works in some cold butter and shortening. A quick stir of some buttermilk finishes off the biscuit dough. The biscuits get cut, brushed with melted butter and popped into large cast iron pans to bake. I think the cowboys will be pleased, especially after Ree makes the sausage gravy. Sausage gravy and biscuits are BFFs.

Ree's Sausage Gravy starts with, you guessed it, sausage! A whopping 2 pounds of breakfast sausage that gets crumbled and browned in a skillet. Ree sprinkles the cooked sausage with a bit of flour that will act as the thickener for the whole milk that she stirs in next. The gravy simmers and bubbles away until it's nice and thick. She finishes it up with salt, pepper and seasoned salt.  If I were a biscuit, I would love swimming in this rich, spicy gravy.

Last, but not least, are Ree's Spicy Scrambled Eggs. This is not typical batch of scrambled eggs because it starts with 30 (yes, 30) eggs! Ree adds some (well, actually a lot) of half and half as well as some hot sauce to the eggs. I love it They get a quick scramble in a huge cast iron skillet before they're loaded up into Ree's pick up truck. Ree gathers the biscuits, gravy and potatoes and heads out to meet the hungry crew.

They seem to be happy campers..er, ranchers, with their breakfast delivery. While none of the recipes in this episode were blow-your-mind unique, they were all good basics that any good home cook should have up their sleeve. This breakfast would make pretty much anyone happy.