Celebrity chef Ree Drummond has publicly confessed to a major culinary misstep, revealing the one recipe from her long-running Food Network series that she deeply regrets ever sharing with viewers.
The Pioneer Woman's Viral Kitchen Fail
Ree Drummond, the 56-year-old star behind the popular blog and TV show The Pioneer Woman, pinpointed a specific dish as the "worst thing" she's ever seen. The offending creation? A chicken strip pizza that has since gained notoriety online.
Drummond, who launched her lifestyle blog in 2006 before her cooking show began airing in 2011, has shared hundreds of recipes over the years. However, she recently admitted at a promotional event for her latest cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: The Essential Recipes, that this particular pizza was a significant low point.
A Recipe Born from Exhaustion and Time Pressure
The chef explained the chaotic circumstances that led to the dish's creation. Her production team would film in blocks, visiting five times a year for three-week stretches to shoot about 40 episodes annually. "Usually by the end of the shoot, everyone is tired of cooking, tired of food, and really racing to get everything done," Drummond stated.
It was during the final episode of one such exhausting shoot that she conceived the idea for a fried chicken pizza, inspired by an early California Pizza Kitchen offering. Her original vision involved homemade popcorn chicken nuggets and a from-scratch crust.
However, pressed for time as the crew prepared to return to London, she was forced to take shortcuts. The ambitious homemade elements were swapped for frozen chicken strips and a pre-made pizza base, setting the stage for disaster.
The Culinary Catastrophe Goes Viral
"The chicken strips were way too big, and this pizza was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life," Drummond recalled. "After I put the chicken strips on there, they just fell like bricks. Then I inexplicably poured pickles over the top."
The recipe's infamy was later cemented when Drummond's adult daughter, Paige Drummond Andersen, noted that the fried chicken pizza had gone viral on TikTok, celebrated as The Pioneer Woman's worst recipe.
This wasn't the first time Drummond has expressed remorse over the dish. In a 2019 blog Q&A, she lamented the gap between her vision and the reality. She described hoping for "big, beautiful pieces of homemade fried chicken and thick-cut pickles with a drizzle of honey," but instead creating a "sea of confusion" with subpar frozen strips and even coleslaw. Her final verdict on the experience was blunt: "I wish I could undo (and unsee!) it."
