“Dressing” is a limiting moniker for ranch. It’s built for salads, sure, but ranch dressing is also, crucially, a dip, ideal for dunking chicken wings and tofu nuggets. You can drizzle ranch on pizza, spread it on a sandwich, and generally deploy a dollop anywhere creamy, tangy goodness is welcome. That’s what we in the biz call a multihyphenate.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that you can make your own ranch dressing—we’ve got a classic buttermilk ranch recipe, as well as versions made with tahini and lavender. But sometimes, homemade just isn’t in the cards. That’s when bottled ranch dressing comes in handy. After tasting 16 bottles, we identified the best ranch dressings for dipping, drizzling, and everything in between.
A brief history of ranch
Ranch has been making the rounds for nearly three-quarters of a century. It was developed by Steve Henson, a plumber by trade who cooked for work crews while contracting in Alaska in the 1940s. By the mid-’50s, Henson and his wife had purchased a dude ranch in Santa Barbara County, California, and renamed it Hidden Valley Ranch. There, he continued to serve the dressing as a catch-all sauce—on roasted vegetables, grilled meat, and, yes, as a salad dressing. When guests asked to take it home, Henson got the idea to sell dried seasoning packets by mail order: just mix in buttermilk and mayonnaise, and you’ve got ranch dressing. Clorox acquired the brand in the early ’70s and the dressing’s popularity skyrocketed in the US.
How we picked the products
We started by compiling a comprehensive list of ranch dressing brands available at grocery stores nationwide. This means power players like Hidden Valley and Ken’s, and relative newcomers such as Olive Garden and Chick-fil-A. To round out our list, we consulted past taste tests (specifically our best Caesar dressing taste test) as well as ranch taste tests across the web and Reddit threads populated by ranch superfans.
How we set up our taste test
Was the idea of tasting 16 ranch dressings straight at one o’clock in the afternoon a popular one around the Bon Appétit office? Not particularly. Nevertheless, that’s what we did. We poured each contender into an anonymized bowl, and our panel tasted it both on its own and with sliced carrots.
How we evaluated the dressings
An exemplary ranch dressing is a balancing act. Our tasters said the winner should have robust flavor; dill, garlic, onion, and other herbs should be prominent. The tanginess should be restrained—enough to cut through the richness of the dairy, but not so sharp that it makes you pucker. As should the black pepper—we want a warm prickle, not overpowering spice. The best ranch also has to be creamy, not gloopy. It shouldn’t be so thick that it retains its shape when poured; rather, it should settle into a pool that undulates, not jiggles, when shaken.
The best classic ranch: Ken’s Steak House
Photo by Travis Rainey, Prop Styling by Alexandra Massillon, Food Styling by Rebecca Jurkevich
