- 1 cup olive oil mayonnaise
- 1/2 cup whole fat sour cream
- 2 tablespoons sliced, minced fresh chives
- 2 tablespoons Gourmet Gardens® Parsley Paste
- 3 tablespoons finely minced fresh dill
- 1/2 rounded and packed teaspoon finely minced fresh garlic
- 1/4 rounded teaspoon of Redmond's® Real Salt
- 1/2 tablespoon white wine vinegar
- 1/2 scant cup whole fat buttermilk
Directions:
In a nutshell, you will add the ingredients in the order which they are given, stirring between groupings of them. So, prep your garlic first and line up all of your ingredients. I have always made the ranch dressing in a 4-cup glass measuring cup.
I go back and forth between starting with the fresh herbs and the first two dairy items. I have settled on starting with the mayonnaise and sour cream, stirring them together.
Then add the chives, parsley paste, dill, and garlic. Stir well, dipping down to the bottom of your container to ensure that the herbs and garlic are completely mixed into your diary ingredients.
Then add the salt and white wine vinegar and take the opportunity to mix together your ingredients another time.
Next, slowly and gently fold in the buttermilk. You want your ranch dressing to be thick at first, because the longer it sits in the refrigerator, the more it breaks down to a thin dressing. Keep folding until you have finished incorporating all of the buttermilk, but only just.
Finally (AND DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP), allow the ranch dressing to sit in the refrigerator for a good amount of time so that the ingredients can meld together. IDEALY, you want to make your ranch dressing last thing in the evening and leave it overnight. Trust me, fresh made ranch and "stewed" ranch is worlds apart in tastiness.
I store my ranch in a dark mason jar in the refrigerator, using a four-ounce jar for the bit that doesn't fit into a quart jar.
Myrtle's Note: Special thanks to my dear friend Becky for giving me the courage to try making ranch dressing from scratch. Pioneer Woman's base recipe is just perfect and you can modify it as you wish. I am a lover of dill in ranch dressing and decided to just go whole hog. For my friend Bethanie, I decided to try to quantify what I do so that she, too, could make it. It took me two tries to figure it out and then a third batch to ensure that it was replicable. Friends are the best cook encouragers!
About those ingredients, so often people make substitutions on key ingredients. So, I am specifying whole fat dairy. If you do not use it, your ranch dressing will not turn out sublime. Also, whole fat dairy is healthier than low fat!
I would still use the same amount of dried chives (although my chives grow through the snow) and 2-3 tablespoons dried dill, but high quality, such as Mountain Rose Herbs. Their shipping is not economical, but they sell the best cinnamon on the planet. I often buy 2-3 pounds and share it with friends as well as cook liberally with it. Their cumin is stellar, as is the dill. Buying larger quantities of those three items makes the shipping moot in comparison to what you pay for lower quality spices in the store and their fresh herbs and spices age better than those in the store. Sharing all three spices with friends or giving them as gives will make you quite popular. I find parsley paste better than fresh parsley. Don't ask me why. I often use Gourmet Gardens herbs because they last longer and add far more to a meal than dried herbs do. Their basil paste will knock your socks off!
Pioneer Woman's recipe calls for 1-2 cloves of garlic. However, cloves vary in size. I spent eons trying to find that balance of the fresh bite of garlic that falls between awful hot garlic and disappearing garlic. What I like about cooking with garlic is that I often will double and triple the amount of garlic in most heated recipes and have never, ever had someone tell me that there was too much garlic in them. But I have learned the hard way that finding the perfect garlic in non-heated recipes is rather tricky. Hence the specific directions of garlic that is finely minced, packed into a 1/2 teaspoon, and rounded on the top.
Yield: 10-12 ounces
Source: https://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/homemade-ranch-dressing/
