‘The Pioneer Woman’: Ree Drummond’s Chicken With Red Pepper Sauce Recipe Is an Easy Make-Ahead Meal
Ree Drummond loves an easy dinner idea and her chicken with red pepper sauce recipe is a perfect make-ahead meal. The Pioneer Woman star shared how she quickly pulled the dinner together, then refrigerated it until she was ready to cook it.
Ree Drummond’s chicken recipe is easy to make in advance
Drummond demonstrated how to make her chicken recipe on an episode of The Pioneer Woman. “I have a huge, busy, crazy day ahead of me so I’m going to make a meal kit that will make dinner tonight so easy,” she explained. “I’m making chicken with red pepper sauce.”
Drummond cut roasted red peppers from a jar while she sauteed onions and garlic in a skillet with oil and butter. She added the peppers and cooked them, then added chicken broth.
“This is a quick and very easy sauce. It’s probably one of my top five favorite sauces of all time,” she shared. “It is so nice to be able to use roasted red peppers. I have loved these things for years.”
Drummond continued, “I love this sauce because it’s really nice and red. And when you take a bite, you think it’s going to be some kind of tomato-based sauce but then it has that sweet pepper flavor and it’s just so delicious.”
The Food Network host added cream to the sauce and seasoned it with salt and pepper. Once the sauce was heated, she pureed it in a food processor.
Drummond prepped the chicken and vegetables
Drummond made a simple chicken marinade by putting six flattened chicken breasts in a zip-top bag with olive oil, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning. “It doesn’t get any easier than mixing a marinade right in the bag you’re using to marinate,” she explained. “No need to dirty up another bowl, I say.”
Drummond also prepped the vegetables ahead of time. She combined olive oil, salt, pepper, roasted red pepper flakes, minced garlic, fresh thyme, and fresh oregano in a bag. “The vegetables are going to sit in this mixture all day and then when they’re in the oven, they’re just going to roast beautifully.,” she said. “They’ll have such amazing flavor.”
The Pioneer Woman star added chunks of zucchini, fresh green beans, and asparagus spears to the bag and sealed it. “I have been a fan of meal kits for years,” she shared. “Meal kit services are so big right now. It’s a really cool concept.”
She added, “I like making my own meal kits — usually I do it in the morning, sometimes the day before. Just put everything on a sheet pan and then when meal time comes around, all you have to do is a little cooking or a little heating up.”
‘The Pioneer Woman’ star shared the easy cooking directions for her chicken recipe
Since she was prepping the meal kit to cook later, Drummond placed the sealed bag of chicken, bag of vegetables and container of sauce on a sheet pan. When she was ready to cook the meal, the Food Network host placed the vegetables on a sheet pan and roasted them in a 425 degree Fahrenheit oven for 10 minutes.
She put the chicken on the grill for four minutes on the first side while she heated the sauce in a pan. She turned the chicken over and cooked it on the second side for four more minutes.
Drummond grated parmesan over the vegetables and served the veggies alongside the chicken, which she topped with the red pepper sauce.
The full recipe is available on the Food Network website.
