[1] Freshly made buttermilk/ranch dressing. The recipe is below (Nibble photo).

[2] A wedge salad with buttermilk/ranch dressing. Here’s the recipe (photo © Creative Culinary).

[3] Crudités with buttermilk/ranch dressing (photo © The Fry Family Unsplash).

[4] America’s #1 bottled dressing, Hidden Valley Ranch (at right) and the runner-up, Kraft. By the way, Hidden Valley isn’t just the favorite ranch dressing; it’s America’s favorite bottled dressing (photo © The Nibble).

[5] The dressing is used to top tacos, pizzas, and casseroles like this one. Here’s the recipe from Kraft.

Updated August 2026

March 10th is National Ranch Dressing Day, celebrating America’s favorite bottled dressing. It surpassed the previous favorite, Italian dressing, way back in 1992.

Ranch dressing is made of buttermilk, mayonnaise, seasonings (black pepper, garlic, ground mustard seed, lemon juice, paprika), and herbs (chives, parsley, and dill). Sour cream or yogurt are sometimes used for all or part of the buttermilk or mayonnaise.

Here’s something few people realize:

Ranch and buttermilk are essentially fraternal twins. They’re interchangeable in recipes.

Buttermilk dressing, which has been made across the southern U.S. for generations; ranch evolved in the 1950s.

The key difference is garlic and onion were used to make the modern dressing a tad garlicky and more herb-forward.

Another difference is that ranch dressing often (but not always) includes sour cream in addition to mayonnaise and buttermilk; the sour cream makes it a bit more tangy.

However, just to confuse things, some buttermilk recipes add herbs and some ranch recipes do not; some buttermilk and ranch dressings add sour cream, others do not.

Americans can understandably be puzzled. Look closely at recipes and packaged dressings. Many have both “buttermilk” and “ranch” in the title or on the label.

Below:

> Nana’s buttermilk dressing recipe.

> Ways to use ranch dressing.

> The history of ranch dressing.

> About Hidden Valley, the first ranch dressing brand.

Elsewhere on The Nibble:

> 10 ranch dressing variations to add texture and excitement.

> The year’s 18 dip, dressing, and sauce holidays.
 
 
1. NANA’S BUTTERMILK DRESSING RECIPE

This is our grandmother’s recipe. She enhanced it with herbs long before ranch dressing did so. She would want you to know:

• Tip #1: It is so easy to make your own buttermilk. You don’t have to buy a quart of buttermilk if you only need a cup. Just combine one cup of milk with one tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar. Stir and let sit at room temperature for 5 to 10 minutes.
• Tip #2: It is so easy to turn buttermilk/ranch into blue cheese dressing. Just stir in 1/2 cup crumbled quality blue cheese.

 
Ingredients For 1.5 Cups Dressing

 
Variations

There are many variations on the original ranch recipe. Anyone can adjust the seasonings in the recipe above to bring out the flavors you like. You can also switch them out; for example:

 
Preparation

1. WHISK together the buttermilk and mayonnaise in a medium bowl. When fully combined, blend in the other ingredients. That’s it!

2. COVER tightly and refrigerate. It will keep for a few weeks.
 

[6] If the dressing is too thick, thin it with buttermilk or a buttermilk-water blend (photo: Pixabay).

Ranch dressing is common in the U.S. as a salad dressing and a dip for crudités. It is also popular:

 

[7] If the dressing is too thick, thin it with buttermilk or a buttermilk-water blend (photo: Pixabay).
 
 
3. BOTTLED RANCH DRESSING & WHY YOU SHOULD MAKE YOUR OWN

What’s in bottled ranch dressing? Hidden Valley’s website says:

Our Original Ranch® recipes are made with wholesome ingredients and the perfect blend of herbs and spices. Enjoy the farm fresh taste of Hidden Valley® in our ranch dressing mixes, dips and salad toppings.

Many food writers, nutritionists, and clean-eating advocates would indeed consider the term “wholesome” in this context to be disingenuous marketing puffery. The actual ingredient list:

INGREDIENTS: Soybean oil, water, egg yolk, sugar, salt, cultured nonfat buttermilk, natural flavors (soy), spices, less than 1% of dried garlic, dried onion, vinegar, phosphoric acid, xanthan gum, modified food starch, monosodium glutamate, artificial flavors, disodium phosphate, sorbic acid, and calcium disodium EDTA as preservatives, disodium inosinate, and disodium guanylate.

Not exactly wholesome or farm fresh!

In reality, mass-market bottled ranch is an industrial food product engineered for a long shelf life, emulsification stability, and hyper-palatability. If you want to know more, read the †footnote.

So, time to really know how good ranch is, by making your own. Here’s a recipe.
 

[8] Who needs ketchup? (photo © Liudmyla Chuhunova | SmarterpPix)
 
 
4. HISTORY OF RANCH DRESSING

A Quick Timeline

• 1950s–1970s: Steve Henson created the original ranch dressing in the early 1950s; Hidden Valley sold dry dressing mix nationally, and Clorox bought the brand in 1972.
• 1983/1984: Ready-to-use, shelf-stable bottled Hidden Valley Ranch arrived in supermarkets. Convenience helped turn it from a mix made for salads into an everyday refrigerated-door staple.
• 1986–1987: The key cultural breakthrough was Cool Ranch Doritos. Ranch became a snack-food flavor—not merely a salad dressing—and suddenly reached children and teenagers in a huge way. Mental Floss identifies the launch as 1986; other histories date it to 1987, so “the late 1980s” is safest.
• 1992: Ranch overtook Italian to become the top-selling salad dressing in the U.S., a benchmark for the preference shift. The New York Times describes ranch as America’s leading dressing.
• 1990s onward: Ranch became a dip and all-purpose condiment for pizza, wings, fries, vegetables, chips, and more—not just salad dressing, but a culture-shifting condiment.

 
The Origin Story

Ranch dressing evolved from the older buttermilk dressings of Texas and the West. By the late 1800s, the naturally-occurring sour milk, called buttermilk, was popular in baked goods and for marinating chicken, and later as a health food at spas and sanitariums.

The first form of buttermilk dressing likely originated in Texas, created by chuck wagon cooks. In the cattle-rich High Plains*, buttermilk was inexpensive and plentiful, while the vegetable oils needed to make mayonnaise were comparatively costly or less readily available.

Cooks used it to make tangy dressings for greens and as dips for fried foods. Those early Texas recipes were often cooked, egg-thickened dressings: a boiled dressing made with eggs, vinegar, buttermilk, herbs, and spices.

The tangy dressing became popular among cowboys on greens and as dips for fried food, and chuck wagon cooks dished out creamy buttermilk-based dressings for a long time [source].

Modern Buttermilk Dressing

The first-known printed “modern” buttermilk dressing recipe, in a 1937 issue of the San Antonio Light, was a cold blend of buttermilk, mayonnaise, onion juice, lemon juice, dry mustard, white pepper, and paprika. (Famed restaurant critic Craig Claiborne, a Southern boy, hated it.)

Certainly it existed prior to 1937. Often recipes exist for years before they find their way into newspapers, magazines, package labels, and advertisements.

With the advent of commercial mayonnaise in the 1930s, the dressing became easier to make, and no boiling was required.

Although it had no herbs or garlic, it was recognizably close to ranch dressing. It can be argued that Hidden Valley Ranch was, essentially, a branded version of the older Western buttermilk-dressing tradition.

As modern refrigeration (in the form of the icebox) became commonplace in homes, the milk no longer soured. Commercial dairies began to culture it, and sold the buttermilk we know today beginning in the 1920s.

Here’s a longer discussion of the evolution of buttermilk.

Ranch Dressing Arrives

Ranch dressing grew from the older buttermilk dressings of Texas and the West. In cattle country, buttermilk was cheap and plentiful, and cooks used it to make tangy dressings for greens and as dips for fried foods.

Published Texas recipes for ranch dressing date to at least 1937.

In the early 1950s, Steve Henson, a Nebraskan working in the Alaska bush, created a dressing for his crew from buttermilk, sour cream, mayonnaise, and seasonings: garlic, herbs and spices, onions, and salt.

In 1954, Steve and his wife Gayle opened Hidden Valley Ranch, a dude ranch in the Santa Ynez mountains, near Santa Barbara, California. They served the dressing to guests and called it ranch dressing.

It was very popular, and guests asked to buy it to take home. The Hensons sold it both as a finished product and as packets of dry mix to be combined with mayonnaise and buttermilk.

Demand for the dressing grew much more than demand for bookings at the ranch. The Hidden Valley Ranch Food Products was incorporated and a factory was established.

The dressing was first distributed to supermarkets in California and the Southwest, and eventually, nationwide. The brand was purchased by The Clorox Company in 1972 and the ranch was sold.

And now you know how old-fashioned buttermilk dressing turned into the more intriguing-sounding ranch dressing.

Hidden Valley Hits The Big Leagues

Hidden Valley was still a relatively small mail-order/dry-mix business when Clorox acquired it. Multiple sources say the deal was for $8 million.

In the early days of the dry mix, consumers needed to add mayonnaise and buttermilk to create the “Original Ranch” flavor. As the brand grew in the 1970s, Clorox introduced variations to make it more convenient:

 
The need to buy and mix these fresh ingredients is actually what led Clorox to spend years developing the shelf-stable, ready-to-pour bottled version that finally launched in 1983.

Bottled Hidden Valley Ranch came later. Clorox spent years reformulating the product for convenience and shelf stability, and introduced its first bottled salad dressings in 1983.

Hidden Valley’s most recent packet dressing recipe requires the consumer to add buttermilk, mayonnaise, sour cream; minced chives, dill, and garlic; and lemon juice.

Hidden Valley Today

In 2026, when this article was updated, there were 20 Hidden Valley Ranch flavors: Avocado Ranch, Bacon Ranch, Blue Cheese Ranch, Buffalo Ranch, Buttermilk Ranch, Chipotle Ranch, Cilantro Lime Ranch, Coleslaw Ranch, Cracked Pepper Ranch, Creamy Jalapeño Ranch, Garlic Ranch, Green Goddess Ranch, Hot Honey Ranch, Kickin’ Cajun Blackened Ranch, Parmesan Ranch, Pickle Flavored Ranch, Sizzlin’ Nashville Hot Ranch, Spicy Ranch, Sweet BBQ Ranch, and Yum Yum Ranch, the latter a new introduction currently available only at Walmart, which promises the sweet, smoky and tangy flavors of garlic, onion, paprika.

At retail, bottled ranch reached $1.3 billion in 2024 U.S. sales. Ranch even edged out another favorite American condiment, bottled ketchup, around $1.26 billion.

According to a 2022 IGA article quoting a Clorox executive, roughly three out of four U.S. households have ranch in the pantry or refrigerator.

[9] A few of the 20 flavors of Hidden Valley ranch dressing (photo © The Clorox Company).

________________

*The High Plains comprise southeastern Wyoming, southwestern South Dakota, western Nebraska, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, eastern New Mexico, western Oklahoma, and south of the Texas Panhandle.

†Mass-market bottled ranch is an industrial food product, as mentioned above. It’s engineered for a long shelf life, emulsification stability, and hyper-palatability. While all of these additives are FDA-approved (GRAS—Generally Recognized As Safe) and common across commercial salad dressings, they clearly fall into the category of ultra-processed additives, which runs directly counter to what consumers associate with “wholesome” or “farm-fresh.” From a legal standpoint, brands use words like “wholesome” precisely because the FDA does not have a formal regulatory definition for “wholesome” (unlike “organic,” which has stringent requirements, or “healthy,” which carry specific nutrient thresholds for saturated fat, sodium, etc.).

Preservatives and acidity regulators: Phosphoric acid, sorbic acid, disodium phosphate, and calcium disodium EDTA (used to prevent oxidation and keep fats from going rancid without refrigeration prior to opening).

Industrial texture modifiers: Xanthan gum and modified food starch (used to provide a thick, clingy mouthfeel while keeping costs lower than using high percentages of dairy fats and egg yolks).

Flavor enhancers: Monosodium glutamate (MSG), disodium inosinate, and disodium guanylate (the classic “I+G” synergy that dramatically boosts savory umami notes), alongside artificial flavorings.
 
 

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

[2] Meatballs stuffed with foie gras at Cheu Noodle Bar (photo © Tina Wong | The Wandering Eater).

[3] Polpette de tonno, tuna meatballs. Here’s the recipe from Ricette Della Nonna (photo © Ricette Della Nonna).

[4] Keftedes, Greek meatballs. Here’s the recipe from Bowl of Delicious (photo © Bowl Of Delicious).

[5] Indian spices and pappadums make these meatballs special. Here’s the recipe from BBC Good Food (photo © BBC Good Food).

[6] Albondigas, Mexican meatballs served in soup. Here’s the recipe from Fresh By Northwest (photo © Fresh By Northwest).

Yesterday we featured the first five of ten meatball trends.

To sum up, the first five include:

1. Stuffed Meatballs
2. Lamb Meatballs
3. Asian Meatballs
4. Floating Meatballs
5. Vegetarian & Vegan Meatballs
 
Today we finish the list.

But first: Yesterday we mentioned a meatball party, serving as many of these recipes as you like.

How about inviting friends and family to bring their homemade meatballs, perhaps with prizes after a blind vote?
 
 
6. POULTRY MEATBALLS

For health and sustainability, chicken (photo #1) and turkey meatballs have become popular over the last two decades. Duck meatballs have become the darlings of some chefs, who grind their own duck meat.

If you don’t already serve poultry meatballs, expand your repertoire in traditional ways (with spaghetti, on heros) and new ones.

 
Restaurant Creations:

 
7. UPSCALE MEATBALLS

Traditionally, meatballs have been a more economical way to enjoy meat. But you can reverse the situation by adding higher-end ingredients.

 
Restaurant Creations:

 
8. SEAFOOD MEATBALLS

If fish or shellfish can be formed into burgers, patties, or cakes, then they can be formed into meatballs.

 
Restaurant Creations:

 
9. INTERNATIONAL MEATBALLS

You can find meatballs almost everywhere around the globe: kofte (Middle Eastern); bun cha (Vietnamese); frikadeller (Danish); bakso (Indonesian); klopsiki (Polish); kofta (Indian). Go global with international recipes (photo #5), or just use the country’s signature spices in your own meatballs.

 
Restaurant Creations:

 
10. SPICY MEATBALLS

In 1969, Alka-Seltzer famously based a commercial on the line uttered by a man who had eaten a too-spicy meatball: “Mama mia, that’s a spicy meatball!” If you’re old enough to remember, you may still use that line, along with “Where’s the beef” and other classics.

Things have changed a lot since then. Americans have embraced heat, from chiles and hot sauces, in just about everything. So the Alka-Selter would have more of a challenge with today’s higher spice levels. Instead, consider:

 
Restaurant Creations:

 
Don’t forget to plan a meatball party to enjoy the whole group.

Back to Part 1.

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

We love Irish soda bread, in the traditional recipe with raisins and a savory version made with cheddar cheese (in the same article).

But here’s a version of Irish soda bread that is not tradition in the Emerald Isle. It was created by Christine Fischer of Wry Toast Eats.

Christine uses Chocolate Dreams peanut butter (photo #4) from PB & Co., to create swirls of dark chocolate PB in the bread.

Can’t have/don’t like peanut butter? Add the chocolate chips only, and substitute 1/2 cup of dried cherries, cranberries or raisins for the PB.
 
 
RECIPE: CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER IRISH SODA BREAD

Prep time is 30 minutes plus freezing time; cook time is 40-45 minutes.

Ingredients For 8-10 Servings

 
For Serving

 
Preparation

1. MELT the chocolate chips in a small saucepan over low heat, about 2 minutes. Once melted, add the peanut butter and vegetable oil, stirring until well combined. Pour into parchment-lined baking dish, distributing evenly (photo #1). Transfer to the freezer and chill for at least 1 hour (photo #2).

2. PREHEAT the oven to 360°F. Amply grease a round 9” baking pan and set aside.

3. COMBINE the milk and white vinegar in a small bowl, stirring gently. Allow the ingredients to sit for 10 minutes until the milk begins to curdle. Once the milk curdles…

4. COMBINE the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt in large mixing bowl, whisking until mixed. Gently stir in the frozen chocolate chunks.

5. SLOWLY ADD the curdled milk to the flour mixture, stirring until the dough begins to take shape. If needed, add an extra tablespoon or two of milk. Once the dough has formed…

6. TRANSFER to a floured surface and kneed several times before forming into a ball. While kneading the dough, the peanut butter chunks should begin to melt and spread. It’s a bit messy, but use the extra flour as needed to make forming a ball manageable. When ready…

7. TRANSFER the dough to the greased baking pan. Cut an “X” into the top of the dough. A cross cut before baking allows the heat to penetrate into the thickest part of the bread. As a bonus in a Catholic country like Ireland, it adds the symbolic note of giving thanks.

[1] Step 1: Melt the chocolate.

[2] Step 2: Freeze it for an hour.

[3] Step 3: Fresh from the oven.

[4] Photos courtesy Christine Fischer and PB & Co.

9. SLICE and serve immediately, slathering with extra butter as desired; or let it cool as you prefer.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF IRISH SODA BREAD

Baking soda, called bread soda in Ireland, was invented in the early 1800s. In those days most people didn’t have an oven. They cooked in a fireplace over coals or a peat fire (called turf fire in Ireland). They placed the dough in a lidded cast-iron pot which went right on top of the fire.

In County Donegal and County Leitrim, there was a tradition of adding caraway seeds to bread. Immigrants brought that recipe to the U.S. In America, the recipe evolved to include butter, eggs, raisins and sugar—ingredients which frugal housewives in Ireland wouldn’t have thought to add to the dough.

Today, the soda bread recipe options include: