> Ranch is most popular in the Midwest, according to the Association of Dressings and Sauces.
I believe that. I've seen it brought to the table there in Mexican restaurants alongside free salsa without even asking. They just assume you'd want it. At first I thought "Oh free queso, great", but no, just ranch.
> Valley Ranch is no more. Steve Henson sold the brand to the Clorox company in 1972 for $8 million;
There is something ironic about what used to be chemical company known for selling bleach (at that time) to owning the most iconic American ranch dressing.
Whenever someone uses that phrase, I now tend to picture this beautiful monologue by Will Oldham in the movie "A Ghost Story": https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6bs2o5
It's long and depressing (what do you expect for a downer monologue at a party?) but I think worth you while to watch, so that you too can have a comparison point for the future.
I love the idea that where we went too far was in adding herbs to our sour cream lightened with buttermilk. We've all flown too high on borrowed wings!
In 1957 Procter & Gamble bought Clorox Chemical Company, which at the time made only bleach. The Federal Trade Commission challenged the merger on anticompetitive grounds -- specifically, that ownership by dominant conglomerate that makes soap, detergent, and cleaners, and spends enormous amounts on advertising, would dissuade other entrants to the liquid bleach market, a chemically bland product whose marketshare nonetheless appeared to correlate with advertising -- and ordered them to divest Clorox. A prolonged court battle ensued, eventually decided by the Supreme Court in 1967 [1], which held that they indeed must divest.
The new, but still Oakland-based Clorox then embarked on a plan to be a little brother to P&G, acquiring a diverse array of marketable brands -- many cleaners, but also Hidden Valley Ranch in 1972, at the time still a hometown California phenomenon, and still a dry packet of mix to which consumers had to add buttermilk to make [2].
Clorox first reformulated the dry mix such that it could be made with milk, then in 1983 they began selling a premade, shelf-stable bottle of it [2], which was instrumental in helping it attain the popularity it has today.
Clorox has a very approachable blog entry [3] about Hidden Valley Ranch, where Curtis Stettler, a former longtime product developers for KC Masterpiece and Hidden Valley, recounts the history of the product line from pre-acquision to today, covering some wacky 90s flavors along the way, and insider comments that recount flavors surviving decades of branding renames, and frustrations with bacon bits trying to poke through the packaging.
>then in 1983 they began selling a premade, shelf-stable bottle of it
I was born in '83 and I still remember my mom mixing ranch dressing by hand in a special ranch dressing mixing bottle [0] that they sold. I always wondered why she mixed it by hand back then.
I find the taste of the hand mixed one to be an improvement on the premade bottled one. Although my preference for the taste may be nostalgic as that is what my parents and grandparents did as well.
In the book The Hidden Persuaders (1957) by Vance Packard he describes research into failing pre-made products that revealed the buyers (homemakers) felt less self-worth if they weren't required to undertake at least some of the preparation. (IIRC cake mixture was the case study.)
There was also a similar response by pharmacists when drugs first appeared on the market requiring no preparation.
As a European I don't understand this. Here, salad is merely consumed as an "oil delivery device", it's all about the dressing. So, accordingly, not one bit of salad should remain dry. Ranch is thick, therefore annoying to use on salad, because it doesn't drench the whole thing. Unless you shake the salad, you'll have plenty of dry leaves. ewwww.
I use a small amount of dressing, but I also want it on the whole salad. So I spent time mixing it. Shaking would be ideal, but I don't have a container, just a bowl, so mixing has to do. It takes a minute, but it's not hard.
As an aside, I use way less dressing than I did as a kid, and less than most people I see. Now, veggies drowning in dressing grosses me out. I just want a little bit of the flavor on the veggies.
This is a generalization. As an European too, there's plenty of places here where it's common to just have some salt and oil and the protagonists are very much the different vegetables (and other stuff!) you put in the salad.
Same for vinaigrettes and all sorts of dressings. I actually think salads drenched in greasy stuff are a bit too much.
As a fellow European and salad purist, I believe olive oil and salt is the only respectable dressing for a salad. Balsamic vinegar may be acceptable in some circles, but personally I see little point. Ditto lemon juice. ;-)
Well, I really dislike the Caesar salad, for obvious reasons stated above.
But maybe an explanation for its success is that it's fried chicken with dip "disguised as a salad". The salad in the caesar salad is just to pretend it's healthy.
Obviously, I'm aware of chicken Caesars. But, first, a chicken Caesar contains grilled chicken, not fried chicken, and second, if you order a Caesar (not a chicken Caesar) and it comes with chicken on it, you can send it back.
> Chicken Caesar salad is wildly popular in the US, and it's probably far more popular than original-style Caesar salad.
Chicken Caesar is, for fairly obvious reasons, far more popular than traditional Caesar as a standalone meal, but it's probably far less popular than traditional (or, at least, not featuring chunks of meat) Caesar overall.
Crap, I thought the caesar always had chicken in it. You're right... For some reason, I keep going at places where they serve it with chicken (not fried, of course, that was just for the sake of the argument). I guess, I need to give a shot at the original recipe.
> As a European I don't understand this. Here, salad is merely consumed as an "oil delivery device", it's all about the dressing.
Thick dressings are ideal for that, as they maximize the deliverable dressing per unit of vegetable matter.
> Ranch is thick, therefore annoying to use on salad, because it doesn't drench the whole thing. Unless you shake the salad, you'll have plenty of dry leaves.
If you don't toss a dressed salad you either have dry leaves or a pool of dressing (possibly both) depending on quantity and viscosity of dressing applied.
I like using ranch as a dip for nachos. It goes especially well with the chips that the toppings somehow miss, and it still goes pretty well with the chips that are loaded with toppings.
I've also found that it works very well with bread (the kind of bread that's served with dinner, not sandwich bread). I discovered this not too long ago, because my company likes to cater executive and sales meetings and then after the meeting, they put out the leftovers for the rest of the company to enjoy (this is famous within the company, and the phrase "the [Company-Name] 15" gets mentioned a lot... I've even seen it pop up in our Glassdoor reviews). Sometimes, these leftovers include dinner rolls or pieces of Italian bread, and sometimes they include salad with a bowl of ranch on the side. If I'm lucky, sometimes they'll include both. You see, I like bread, but it can get dry by itself... and I like ranch, but I don't like salad. So one day I decided to combine the best parts of them. I took some of the bread, cut the pieces in half, and started spooning ranch over them. I liked it so much that I've kept doing it every time both get brought out. The ranch works best with Italian bread with thick crusts, because it helps soften them a bit, but it's fine with dinner rolls too.
Ranch as a dip for pizza is also pretty popular, but when I have a choice I'll use clarified garlic butter instead.
Seriously, though, Caesar salad aside: there's a reason to make "creamy" (emulsified) dressings: most lettuce leaves are hydrophobic. If the only flavor you want is that of oil and salt, that's fine, but most of your culinary acid options are water-based. Getting flavors to stick to leaves is as tricky as getting them to stick to pasta --- meaning, deceptively tricky. "Thick" dressings were invented for a reason.
I grew up in rural PA and ranch was not "literally the #1 condiment". There is an urban anti-ranch sentiment that sees it as too provincial to be cool. Once you subtract that sentiment, rural PA does not eat more ranch dressing than the rest of the country.
I wouldn't consider ranch to be oily. Maybe _fattier_ if it's made from sour cream and buttermilk, but if it's oily it's probably not well-mixed or in the right ratio.
Or go for "Greek-American Fusion":
My favorite "ranch" is the dried hidden-valley ranch packets mixed with greek yogurt. Sometimes throw in some cucumbers and garilc from the food-processor. Excellent on spicy gyro meat, salads, pizza, basically everything.
Let's have more food-related threads on HN now and then, people :)
I have been wishing there were more of those here for some time. They can be pretty interesting, not just to read but to try out the stuff. I remember one of the earliest ones I saw here, titled something like "What are your food hacks?" [1]. It was a good one. IIRC, PG also chipped in with a recipe for rice and beans for ramen-profitable (or yet to be that) startups. The punch line was "put <the stuff> in the cooker and forget about it" :)
- where <stuff> was rice and beans, and some condiments, like salt, oil, pepper, whatever.
[1] Probably can still find that one via hn.algolia.com or the search box at the bottom of the HN page (which uses algolia).
the hidden valley recipe calls for mayo and i see most recipes call for it too. flavor would be dulled without it. i own a restaurant and ranch-making day is always a day to behold. 5 gallon buckets to fill with the mixture made with 30lb boxes of mayo, pounds of hidden valley dry seasoning, and housemade buttermilk....
Working in kitchens when I was younger really put me off of mayonnaise and salad oil, especially cleaning the deep fryers. I used to mix up batches of ranch starting with 5 gallon buckets of "heavy duty" grade commercial mayonnaise. Large amounts of mayonnaise still make me wince a little...
When you work with these in industrial quantities, they inevitably ruin your clothes and insinuate themselves into your person.
There's nothing like coming home reeking of fryer smoke and mayo for a couple of months to make you want to trade the fries for a house salad -- vinaigrette on the side please.
I worked in kitchens all through high school and college. I never minded the industrial food service stuff. I still have 5gal buckets that I use for things. Everything that comes out of them smells like pickles (these buckets are years old). I had a coworker who alleged that her boyfriend could taste whether she was serving on Buffalo chicken day a day later. The pay in tech is so much better that it's not even comparable but I kind of miss working in food service. Knowing how fun it isn't to stand over a grill ruined all the "we cook everything in front of you" type restaurants for me though.
65 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 95.7 ms ] threadI believe that. I've seen it brought to the table there in Mexican restaurants alongside free salsa without even asking. They just assume you'd want it. At first I thought "Oh free queso, great", but no, just ranch.
> Valley Ranch is no more. Steve Henson sold the brand to the Clorox company in 1972 for $8 million;
There is something ironic about what used to be chemical company known for selling bleach (at that time) to owning the most iconic American ranch dressing.
One example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_trade
It's long and depressing (what do you expect for a downer monologue at a party?) but I think worth you while to watch, so that you too can have a comparison point for the future.
The new, but still Oakland-based Clorox then embarked on a plan to be a little brother to P&G, acquiring a diverse array of marketable brands -- many cleaners, but also Hidden Valley Ranch in 1972, at the time still a hometown California phenomenon, and still a dry packet of mix to which consumers had to add buttermilk to make [2].
Clorox first reformulated the dry mix such that it could be made with milk, then in 1983 they began selling a premade, shelf-stable bottle of it [2], which was instrumental in helping it attain the popularity it has today.
Clorox has a very approachable blog entry [3] about Hidden Valley Ranch, where Curtis Stettler, a former longtime product developers for KC Masterpiece and Hidden Valley, recounts the history of the product line from pre-acquision to today, covering some wacky 90s flavors along the way, and insider comments that recount flavors surviving decades of branding renames, and frustrations with bacon bits trying to poke through the packaging.
[1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/386/568.html [2] http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/number_1/2005/08/ranch_dr... [3] https://www.thecloroxcompany.com/blog/this-day-in-clorox-his...
I was born in '83 and I still remember my mom mixing ranch dressing by hand in a special ranch dressing mixing bottle [0] that they sold. I always wondered why she mixed it by hand back then.
[0] (image of bottle a few screens down): https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-ranch-dressing-served-at-re...
There was also a similar response by pharmacists when drugs first appeared on the market requiring no preparation.
Pretty good with fries though.
However, ranch has long transcended salad. The article goes pretty into depth on the varieties of things it's used with.
As an aside, I use way less dressing than I did as a kid, and less than most people I see. Now, veggies drowning in dressing grosses me out. I just want a little bit of the flavor on the veggies.
Also, having lived in California for a while, I've grown to like eating greens like frisee without any dressing at all.
Frisee without any dressing though, I don't know how you manage. It tickles the tonsils in all the most unpleasant ways.
Same for vinaigrettes and all sorts of dressings. I actually think salads drenched in greasy stuff are a bit too much.
But maybe an explanation for its success is that it's fried chicken with dip "disguised as a salad". The salad in the caesar salad is just to pretend it's healthy.
Also the name kind of rules
It's named for the dude who came up with it, for whatever that's worth to you.
I'd even go as far as to say that Caesar salad has become something like pizza, where the assumption is that of course you put toppings on it.
Chicken Caesar is, for fairly obvious reasons, far more popular than traditional Caesar as a standalone meal, but it's probably far less popular than traditional (or, at least, not featuring chunks of meat) Caesar overall.
Thanks, one more thing to try.
I also do love the Caesar flavor and like getting that kind of salad with spinach and kale instead to try and have more nutrients in the leafy parts.
Thick dressings are ideal for that, as they maximize the deliverable dressing per unit of vegetable matter.
> Ranch is thick, therefore annoying to use on salad, because it doesn't drench the whole thing. Unless you shake the salad, you'll have plenty of dry leaves.
If you don't toss a dressed salad you either have dry leaves or a pool of dressing (possibly both) depending on quantity and viscosity of dressing applied.
I like using ranch as a dip for nachos. It goes especially well with the chips that the toppings somehow miss, and it still goes pretty well with the chips that are loaded with toppings.
I've also found that it works very well with bread (the kind of bread that's served with dinner, not sandwich bread). I discovered this not too long ago, because my company likes to cater executive and sales meetings and then after the meeting, they put out the leftovers for the rest of the company to enjoy (this is famous within the company, and the phrase "the [Company-Name] 15" gets mentioned a lot... I've even seen it pop up in our Glassdoor reviews). Sometimes, these leftovers include dinner rolls or pieces of Italian bread, and sometimes they include salad with a bowl of ranch on the side. If I'm lucky, sometimes they'll include both. You see, I like bread, but it can get dry by itself... and I like ranch, but I don't like salad. So one day I decided to combine the best parts of them. I took some of the bread, cut the pieces in half, and started spooning ranch over them. I liked it so much that I've kept doing it every time both get brought out. The ranch works best with Italian bread with thick crusts, because it helps soften them a bit, but it's fine with dinner rolls too.
Ranch as a dip for pizza is also pretty popular, but when I have a choice I'll use clarified garlic butter instead.
The only true dip for pizza is buffalo wing sauce. OK, I'll go along with garlic butter...
If you really want an eye-opening flavor experience, try dipping pizza in toum (Lebanese garlic sauce).
But it generally doesn't lead to experimenting with exotic foods from other cultures.
I'm not saying Ranch is a racist white person sauce. I'm just saying look elsewhere for the entrance to flavor town.
For more fun, try Lebanese pizza a la Manoosh in New South Wales.
Shots fired!
Or go for "Greek-American Fusion": My favorite "ranch" is the dried hidden-valley ranch packets mixed with greek yogurt. Sometimes throw in some cucumbers and garilc from the food-processor. Excellent on spicy gyro meat, salads, pizza, basically everything.
I have been wishing there were more of those here for some time. They can be pretty interesting, not just to read but to try out the stuff. I remember one of the earliest ones I saw here, titled something like "What are your food hacks?" [1]. It was a good one. IIRC, PG also chipped in with a recipe for rice and beans for ramen-profitable (or yet to be that) startups. The punch line was "put <the stuff> in the cooker and forget about it" :)
- where <stuff> was rice and beans, and some condiments, like salt, oil, pepper, whatever.
[1] Probably can still find that one via hn.algolia.com or the search box at the bottom of the HN page (which uses algolia).
When you work with these in industrial quantities, they inevitably ruin your clothes and insinuate themselves into your person.
There's nothing like coming home reeking of fryer smoke and mayo for a couple of months to make you want to trade the fries for a house salad -- vinaigrette on the side please.