Vegetable oil, egg yolk, sugar, salt, buttermilk, spices, garlic, onion, vinegar, phosphoric acid, xanthan gum, modified food starch, MSG, artificial flavors, disodium phosphate, sorbic acid, calcium disodium EDTA, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate.

That’s the ingredient list for a certain ranch dressing that we used to serve.  You might find it hidden somewhere… like in a valley.  The first few ingredients aren’t bad at all.  It’s the second half of that list that bothered us a lot.  It gnawed at me because we found it pretty easy to make a from-scratch Honey Mustard dressing and we’ve always done our Balsamic Vinaigrette from scratch.  That ranch was a challenge, though.  Nothing we tried could even come close to the ranch dressing that everyone knows as Ranch Dressing. 

So, we gave up.  We couldn't do a great ranch and we wanted to get rid of all the junk in that dressing's trunk so we took ranch off of the menu and went with our Creamy Peppercorn dressing.  To say that it flopped would be like saying that it hasn’t been too long since UL Football played in a bowl game.

J.P. came to the rescue a few weeks ago and whipped one up for us (as an aside, we should have known the Yankee would get the Ranch Dressing right).  It’s great.  It’s got the right amount of tang while not sacrificing that velvety, creamy flavor you know and love if you dig ranch.

So the next time you have a salad with Ranch, eat well knowing that there’s only the first half of that ingredient list up there because we make it from scratch, only with ingredients you know how to say!