‘The Pioneer Woman’: Ree Drummond’s Southern Panzanella Recipe Is a Unique Summer Salad

Ree Drummond makes an easy summer salad that’s bursting with Southern flavors. Her Southern panzanella recipe is a spin on the classic bread salad that includes collard greens, black-eyed peas, and cornbread.

Ree Drummond shared her love for panzanella — and explained what it is

Drummond wrote about her panzanella recipe in a blog post on The Pioneer Woman website. “I made panzanella this week for a segment on a future Food Network episode, and I was reminded once again just how much I love and adore it,” she wrote.

“In a nutshell, panzanella is tomato-bread salad. I imagine it was originally created as a way to use up old, staling bread, as that is panzanella’s key component,” Drummond continues. “And I can’t remember the first time I ever tried it, but panzanella has been one of my favorite delights for years and years. There’s just something special about it.

She added, “Make panzanella soon! With all the tomatoes and basil around, it’s definitely a summertime dish.”

How to make Ree Drummond’s Southern panzanella summer salad

Drummond was challenged to make a summer salad recipe that incorporated flavors from the deep south — black-eyed peas, cornbread, and collard greens.

She promised to turn the ingredients “into something fantastic.” Drummond said, “You won’t believe how good this is … you’re going to love it.”

She pulled leaves off of collard greens and sliced them into strips. “You know, when it comes to collard greens, I don’t have a lot of experience eating them raw,” the Food Network host explained. “I usually cook them. But only recently have I discovered how great they are as a salad.”

Drummond placed the greens in a bowl and added drained and rinsed canned black-eyed peas, roasted red peppers from a jar she cut into strips, and halved cherry tomatoes.

‘The Pioneer Woman’ star uses cornbread croutons and adds a delicious dressing

Drummond gave the salad another southern-inspired spin. “Panzanella is a bread salad and usually you use Italian bread but I’m going to use these cornbread croutons,” she explained. “Look at these — it’s amazing I have any of these left because I usually like to snack on them until they’re completely gone.”

The Pioneer Woman star made her regular cornbread recipe and cut the bread into cubes, tossed them in melted butter, and cooked them in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 20 minutes. “They’re slightly crisp and they still have a little bit of softness,” she noted. “In other words, they are absolute perfection.”

For the dressing, Drummond combined olive oil, red wine vinegar, honey, grated garlic, salt, and pepper. She shook up the ingredients in a mason jar and poured the dressing over the salad.

“The beauty of panzanella is that the bread cubes absorb the flavors of whatever dressing you’re using,” Drummond said. “And the great thing about collard greens is they don’t get flimsy and wilty. And I think that is a great argument for this panzanella. Especially if you want to make it ahead of time and take it to a friend’s house for a cookout.”

She added mozzarella pearls and tossed everything together. “This is such a dark, rich, deeply colorful salad and the white bright mozzarella pearls just seem to wake everything up,” Drummond shared.

The full recipe is available on the Food Network website.