Josh’s Ranch Dressing
Introduction
Ranch Dressings roots stretch all the way back to 1949 when ranch dressing was invented by a guy named Steven Henson. From that moment forward, people made their own ranch dressing at home and as time went on it became a more and more popular recipe.
In 1983, premade pre-bottled ranch dressing became available in stores and its popularity only soared from there as most American households had a bottle of ranch dressing in their fridge.
In 1992, ranch dressing became the most popular salad dressing in the USA, and why not? It is tangy, creamy, packed full of flavor salad dressing.
Ranch dressing is the gateway into getting kids to eat salad. As soon as a they ranch dressing on a salad, they are hooked. Many will just fill their plate with ice berg lettuce and then drench it in ranch dressing. They need to start somewhere, right? Then overtime they begin to add cucumbers, avocado, and tomato.
What has happened to Ranch dressing over the years? In the 1980s, ranch dressing was good, whether it was made from scratch or bought at the store. Don’t get me wrong, made from scratch is always better, but bottled ranch from the store was good too. I remember my parent’s buying Bob’s Big Boy brand of ranch dressing and how good it was. It had to be refrigerated even before it was opened.
Over the years some good things have happened with ranch. You can now buy different flavors of ranch, such as chipotle ranch, jalapeño ranch, siracha ranch and more! So that’s a good thing. Most of those special ranch dressing flavors are pretty good, now imagine how good they would be made from scratch.
Now for the bad, sadly over the years, the quality of store bought ranch dressing as declined. Every year ranch dressing tastes less and less like ranch. They have added more and more unnatural ingredients, plus they’ve added more and more sugar year after year to the point that store bought ranch dressing is borderline gross! If people who lived between the 1950s and 1980s were to try today’s store bought dressing, they would be calling us all crazy for buying it and eating it. I’m sure there are many other prepackaged foods where this would apply!
So, do yourself a favor and start making your own ranch dressing from scratch. This recipe is a great place to start. It only takes a few minutes to make, it’s healthier, and hell if everybody made their own ranch, the big food conglomerates would have to compete on quality and you would see their quality return to what it was in the 1980s and prior.
Below is the recipe, you can add or take away as you see fit. You can add less milk to make it thick like dip or you can decrease the sour cream if you want to make it thinner. Questions or comments? There’s a form for that below.
Ingredients
1 tbsp fresh dill minced
1 1/2 tbsp fresh parsley minced
2 tbsp fresh chives minced
2 garlic cloved minced
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup of mayo
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
Instructions
In a bowl, add the sour cream, mayo, and buttermilk. Mix well.
Add salt, pepper, and all minced herbs into mix. Mix well.
Boom! You have ranch dressing.
Store your ranch dressing in a jar and keep in refrigerator for at least two hours so that dressing can thicken up a bit and so that the flavors can blend in and hug each other.
Enjoy!