The Best Homemade Ranch Dressing (without buttermilk!)

This is an easy ranch dressing recipe that uses clean ingredients and mixes up fast. After an hour’s rest time, it’s ready to serve and is great for salads, dips, and as an ingredient in recipes! Read on for the step-by-step instructions and common questions about ranch dressing.

Our family uses dips and salad dressings often. Our toddler thinks that the dip is the best part of the meal. In an attempt to consume less preservatives, I have started making my own ranch dressing. This has been the recipe I’ve used for several years and we love it for an assortment of things! It’s great for a veggie dip or as a salad dressing and we use it in recipes that call for store-bought ranch.

 

What is ranch dressing?

Ranch dressing is typically a combination of buttermilk, garlic, salt, and assorted herbs and spices.

 

Do you have to use buttermilk in ranch dressing?

Not always, and this recipe does not call for buttermilk at all. I use a combination of sour cream and greek yogurt to achieve the typical tang that you get from buttermilk.

 

How long does homemade ranch dressing last?

If kept well sealed in the fridge, homemade ranch dressing typically lasts about two weeks. (This is assuming that the sour cream and Greek yogurt used were fresh.) You can help to ensure it lasts as long as possible by using a clean utensil each time you serve it and not directly dipping food into the storage container.

Also, while fresh herbs are great, they have a higher moisture content. The extra water in fresh herbs can cause recipes to go bad faster. So if you choose to make this with fresh herbs, plan to consume the ranch dressing faster!

 

How to make the best homemade ranch dressing (without buttermilk!).

This recipe is so easy, when I made it for this post, I made a double batch because it was for a party. Because it was a double batch, the pictures will show a larger quantity than what this recipe will produce.

 

This recipe will produce about 1 and ⅔ cups of ranch dressing.

In a bowl, combine 1 cup of Greek yogurt, ½ cup of sour cream, 1 ½ tbsp of Worcestershire sauce, 1 ½ tbsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp garlic powder, 1 tbsp salt, 1 tbsp dried chives, and 2 tsp dried dill.

 

Lemon juice may seem like an odd thing to add but the acid is important to the flavor development. I learned a lot about how acid impacts food’s flavor by reading Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.

 

Mix the ingredients until they are thoroughly blended.

 

Place the bowl in the fridge and let it chill for at least an hour. The time in the fridge lets the ingredients meld. It greatly enhances the flavor and will give a more accurate idea of the finished taste. I don’t recommend adjusting seasoning at this point for that reason.

Taste and adjust seasonings to your preferences and serve!

 

We used this as a dip for a veggie tray for our son’s party. Check out the ranch lion face below! It wasn’t my idea, I found it on Pinterest but I was really excited by how it turned out. I also had some chips with the ranch when I made it two days ahead of time. I think that the dip would also taste great with kale chips.

 

Let me know in the comments below if you’ve made homemade ranch dressing before. What do you like to use it for?

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