Homemade Ranch Dressing
Raaaaaaaanch dressing!
Is there nothing it can’t improve?
Obviously a delicious dip, for veggies, chicken wings, chips, crackers, french fries, pizza (?)… but ranch is also a tasty mix in for mashed potatoes or even pasta, an excellent salad dressing, and of course, a pizza topping. I have no idea if its popularity extends to other continents, but in the USA, ranch dressing is king.
Now I know that most people probably have a favorite brand (or brands) of ranch. For many of us, this might be the one we had in elementary school but don’t know the name to. There’s a gazillion varieties in the grocery store. I have on occasion, in an effort to expand my ranch dressing horizons, tried branching out and away from the Kraft and Hidden Valley I grew up with. Sometimes, these are successful ventures, and sometimes, they are gross.
This week I ventured VERY far and tried my hand at homemade ranch. I’ve always been curious about doing so, but honestly, it’s difficult to justify buying a quart of buttermilk when all I need is half a cup. This weekend, however, I had the fateful alignment of both buttermilk AND sour cream in my fridge for other projects, and with fresh parsley and chives in season, the time was ripe.
Here’s the thing to know about making homemade versions of your favorite condiments: they don’t have the shelf life of their grocery-store counterparts. Is this moderately inconvenient? Perhaps. But it’s nice to know that this dressing isn’t full of extra sugar and salt to preserve the dairy solids. It’s also nice to know that it actually contains dairy solids rather than, well, mystery ingredients I can’t recognize.
Ranch dressing, it turns out, is REALLY easy to make. You can have it mixed up in less than 10 minutes, though it really does need a couple of hours to sit to let the flavors intensify. And you have TOTAL control over these flavors. Like your ranch a little spicy? Spike it up with hot sauce or sriracha. Toss in some finely chopped bacon for a bacon ranch (omg yum). Barbecue sauce? Yes please. You can cut or increase the salt in this to suit your tastes, add more herbs, reduce or increase the buttermilk if you want a thick dip or a thin slurry of dressing…
Shouldn’t the rest of life be as flexible as this dressing?
Homemade Ranch Dressing
Adapted from Joy the Baker
Makes about 1 1/2 c dressing
1 clove garlic
1/2 tsp coarse sea salt, divided
1/4 c chopped chives
1/4 chopped flat parsley
1/2 c sour cream
1/4 c mayonnaise
3/8 c buttermilk
1/2 tsp black pepper
Crush a clove of garlic with the side of a knife. Sprinkle 1/4 tsp salt on the clove and crush into a paste with a fork. Finely chop parsley and chives. Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well. Adjust salt and pepper to taste, but be aware that the flavors will intensify after a couple hours and don’t add too much.
Refrigerate for at least two hours before serving. This will be a fairly thick ranch dressing. If a thinner dressing is needed, increase buttermilk to 1/2 cup.
Serve with EVERYTHING. Keeps well for a week or two.
CakePants
January 15, 2014 @ 7:32 pm
This looks pretty simple to make – and I definitely agree that it’s nice to know what’s going into something rather than taking your chances with weird preservatives in store-bought versions. I don’t think ranch dressing is very common overseas. My family took a vacation to Europe when I was a child, and I royally pissed off my parents by constantly whining, “Why don’t they have ranch dressing here?!”