The Pioneer Woman's Best Biscuit Recipes

Whether you're craving a biscuit bursting with savory flavor or one crowned with a sweet topping, Ree Drummond, host of Food Network's The Pioneer Woman, has a biscuit recipe for you. Ree's known for her comfort foods and home cooking, and her easy-to-follow directions and tips make bringing fluffy, soft biscuits to the table quick and easy. And, yes, some of her recipes use canned biscuits; there's no shame in that. Premade biscuits cut down on prep time and save steps in the kitchen, so check out all of Ree's best biscuit recipes and find your favorite.

Whip up a batch of chili or make a bowl of soup and serve Ree's Pimiento Cheese Biscuits with your meal. They get a little bite from 2 tablespoons of chipotles, chopped into little pieces and added to the dough, and 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, combined with softened butter and honey, served as a spread. Dress them up with a garnish of fresh dill. Ree's tip: turn them into breakfast sandwiches by adding ham or sausage.

The Pioneer Woman's best biscuit recipes include Quick and Easy Mini Biscuits that boast great taste in small packages. Ree loves using butter in her biscuits, but this recipe lets you substitute shortening if you prefer. Cut out the dough with a small, round cutter, and these minis will bake up in about 10 minutes. Ree's tip for the holidays: serve them with Christmas ham. They'd make a delicious side dish for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

No need to cut out or roll the dough to make Parmesan Herb Drop Biscuits. They save time and steps in the kitchen, because Ree simply scoops up 1/2 cup-sized balls of dough and uses two large spoons to drop them onto baking trays. The flavor gets a boost with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese and fresh, chopped herbs like parsley, oregano and thyme. This recipe makes 6 supersized biscuits.

Ree told Showbiz Cheat Sheet that she uses a "secret ingredient" in her Black Pepper and Sage Biscuits: powdered milk, which she says enhances their flavor and "give[s] them a really nice consistency." You'll need a pastry cutter to cut two sticks of cold butter and a cup of cold shortening into the dry ingredients in this recipe. Instead of rolling out the dough, which can overwork the gluten and make the biscuits tough and chewy, Ree likes to turn her dough out onto a lightly floured surface, pat it into a circle with her hands and cut out circles with a biscuit cutter or glass. Another tip: Make sure your butter and shortening are very cold. You can even chill your mixing bowl.

Need something to accompany those savory homemade biscuits? Ree also told Showbiz Cheat Sheet that the cowboys on her working cattle ranch love her biscuits with sausage gravy. She makes the gravy with sausage that has a little sage in it, to tie the biscuit and gravy flavors together. Slice the biscuits or leave them whole and top them with the gravy.

When you visit The Mercantile, Ree's popular restaurant, store and bakery in the heart of Osage County, Oklahoma, tame your growling tummy with an order of the hearty Farmer's Breakfast. Need more? Get a side of biscuits with butter and housemade jam or biscuits and sausage gravy seasoned with black pepper. Before you leave, pick up more biscuits at The Merc's Bakery to heat and eat when the hunger pangs hit again, or drop in and grab a to-go order. (Preorder if you need a lot of biscuits to feed a crowd.)

You don’t need a butter dish on the table when you serve Ree’s Garlic Butter Bath Biscuits, because these made-from-scratch delights are soaked in the equivalent of two melted sticks. Just have extra napkins on hand for buttery fingers or serve these with a fork — and worry about cholesterol another day. Ree is known for her love of butter.

The biscuits start with a thick batter of self-rising flour, salt and buttermilk poured into a pan of melted butter. Add minced garlic, chopped chives and minced rosemary and bake in a 450-degree oven. Garnish these golden-brown beauties with more chives. In an interview with Garden & Gun, Ree said these make great "dinner rolls," and they're equally good for breakfast when you leave out the garlic and rosemary.

Serve Ree's Cheddar and Rosemary Drop Biscuits with soups and stews for a real taste treat or, if rosemary's not your favorite herb, substitute another fresh herb you like. While she grates sharp cheddar into her mixture, you could also sub a different cheese. Combine the ingredients in a food processor or use a pastry cutter. Drizzle in some buttermilk and work the mixture just until it forms a dough. When the warm biscuits come out of a 400-degree oven, brush the tops with melted butter and sprinkle on fresh, chopped parsley.

Fuel up for the day with The Pioneer Woman's Breakfast Biscuits. These tasty handfuls call for a well-stocked pantry; to make them, you'll need all-purpose flour, powdered milk, cream of tartar, baking powder, sugar, kosher salt, buttermilk, salted butter, shortening, cayenne pepper and grated cheddar cheese. Turn them into a meal that satisfies your appetite for hours by slicing the biscuits in half, adding sausage patties to the bottom halves and topping them with fried eggs, hot sauce and slices of white cheddar.

Bacon and onion biscuits? Oh, yes. Ree recommends plating them up with eggs for breakfast, pairing them with tomato soup for lunch or serving them with meatloaf for dinner. In her Pioneer Woman newsletter, she says they're "hearty, sticky, substantial and packed with all the goodness of life," and they're so satisfying, just one biscuit is enough.

Dust off your tube or Bundt pan to make Ree's Orange-Vanilla Monkey Bread, which uses canned buttermilk biscuits. Cut the chilled biscuits (don't use the flaky kind) into quarters and shake the pieces in a plastic bag filled with some granulated sugar, kosher salt and orange zest. After they're coated, pop them into the pan and pour a mixture of melted brown sugar, butter and orange juice over the tops. Bake them, turn the pan upside down on a plate to release the cake-like bread, let them cool slightly and then dig in.

Not up for sweets at breakfast? Ree adapted her pull-apart Orange-Vanilla Monkey Bread to give it a savory flavor. This version adds scrambled eggs, bacon, cheese, chives and parsley, with dashes of hot sauce, pinches of freshly ground black pepper, kosher salt and bagel seasoning. It starts with two cans of buttermilk biscuits. After coating the biscuits with melted butter and other ingredients, Ree arranges half of them in a pan, tops them with the cheese, eggs and the remaining biscuits, and bakes them at 375 degrees.

Make Ree's Drop Biscuits for a quick and easy Sunday brunch. You don't have to roll or cut the dough; just drop it by spoonfuls onto a baking tray and give the biscuits 20 to 25 minutes to turn golden brown in an oven set to 400 degrees. Ree likes drop biscuits because melted butter pools nicely on their craggy, uneven tops, and they have a pleasing, homemade look. As with her other biscuit recipes, she keeps her butter and shortening icy cold before using them. When the cold fats melt, they form pockets of steam in the dough that give the biscuits a light, fluffy texture.

You could say that the only mystery about these rolls is that they're made from canned, flaky biscuits — so they're not "rolls" in the strictest sense. And Ree adds an ingredient you don't typically find in biscuits: crumbled blue cheese. They're easy to make; just remove them from the can, separate them, cut them into pieces and roll them in melted butter and the crumbled-up cheese. From opening the can to plating them up, they're ready in about 20 minutes. Serve them warm or freeze them and reheat them later in a microwave.

Chocolate just seems to make everything better, including the canned, refrigerated biscuits Ree uses as a basis for her Chocolatey Biscuit Donuts. For that just-fried doughnut taste, she gives the premade biscuits a tasty, crispy edge by frying them in lard. Don't count the calories when you whip up a batch; they're also made with semisweet chocolate, sugar and heavy cream, as well as unsweetened cocoa.

Every Christmas Day, Ree's family pitches in to cook together, and then they sit down to share a breakfast feast of fried quail with biscuits and gravy. Save time and effort during the holidays by starting with canned or frozen biscuits, as Ree does, or make them from scratch. Slice the biscuits in half and plate them up with a generous serving of the breaded, cooked quail topped with golden-brown gravy.

Your eyes aren't deceiving you; that golden-brown, buttery, slightly sugared topping over all those luscious blueberries is made from one of Ree's biscuit-like dough recipes. The usual ingredients are here: all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, milk and cold salted butter, along with some sugar and a large egg. Pass around each serving with a heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream.

You can do so much with canned biscuits. Ree rolls out refrigerated, flaky jumbo biscuits into 5-inch circles to create mouthwatering fried apple pies. She fills each circle with diced Granny apples cooked until they're tender in a mixture of brown sugar, butter, water, vanilla, salt, cinnamon and lemon juice; cornstarch thickens the slurry. She folds half of each doughy circle over the other half, presses the edges together to seal in the apple-y goodness and crimps the edges with a fork. After the pies are fried, they're dusted with confectioners' sugar and served with her Cinnamon-Caramel Sauce or store-bought caramel sauce.