‘The Pioneer Woman’: Ree Drummond Calls Her Easy Shrimp Pasta Recipe ‘Heaven,’ Fan-Favorite Dish Is Ready in 20 Minutes

Ree Drummond has a special pasta recipe named after her sister and she calls it “heaven” because of the delicious sauce. The Pioneer Woman star’s penne a la Betsy recipe is an easy weeknight dinner that takes less than 20 minutes to make.

Ree Drummond’s penne a la Betsy combines shrimp and pasta with an amazing sauce

Drummond wrote about her penne a la Betsy recipe in a 2007 blog post on The Pioneer Woman website. The Food Network star’s sister was visiting her and Drummond remarked how she “totally regressed back to childhood.” There was plenty of wine, laughter, and cooking involved.

“Marlboro Man had to go out of town for a couple of days, so one of the things Betsy and I made was our favorite pasta dish of all time,” Drummond shared. “I taught her how to make it long, long ago, just after I’d left Los Angeles. I was a food snob extraordinaire, and I decided I needed to impart all my culinary knowledge to my sister, who hadn’t yet left for college.”

She continued, “Among the many dishes I felt compelled to share with her was this pasta, made with an unbeatable combination of shrimp, tomato sauce, cream, garlic, wine, and herbs. Then she left home and became a woman while I married a cattle rancher and said goodbye, essentially forever, to my beloved repertoire of gourmet cuisine.”

How to make Ree Drummond’s easy pasta recipe

Drummond showed how to make the easy pasta dish on an episode of The Pioneer Woman as well as in a TikTok video.

The Pioneer Woman star boiled penne pasta in one pot according to the directions. She melted butter and olive oil in a skillet, then added shrimp and sprinkled it with salt and pepper. She cooked the shrimp on both sides until pink, then removed it from the skillet.

While making the pasta dish on her Food Network show, Drummond noted, “It’s so simple but it’s truly one of the most delicious things ever.”

She also shared that it’s a fan-favorite recipe. “I love this recipe so much. Shortly after I started my cooking website, I posted it and it, by far, has been one of the most beloved recipes on my site,” Drummond noted. “And I always think to myself, ‘I understand.’ It’s that good.”

Drummond added chopped onion and garlic to the skillet and cooked them until the onions started to soften. She added white wine to the pan, allowed it to reduce by half, then stirred in tomato sauce. She simmered the sauce, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and added heavy cream. “Tomato cream sauce is heaven,” she said in her TikTok video.

After the sauce simmered, she added sliced basil leaves and chopped parsley. She chopped the shrimp into bite-sized pieces and, once the pasta was cooked and drained, Drummond added the penne and shrimp to the sauce, stirring to combine everything.

“What I love about this dish is that it’s so textural; it isn’t a soupy, thin sauce with a couple of shrimps thrown in,” she wrote in her blog post. “The shrimp is a huge part of the dish.”

The full recipe is available on the Food Network website.