Home Today Is Ranch Dressing Was Created In 1949 By A Plumber-Turned-Cowboy

Ranch Dressing Was Created In 1949 By A Plumber-Turned-Cowboy

Ranch is America’s #1 salad dressing and is far and away our favorite salad dressing as a nation. It received 40 percent of the vote in a poll by the Association for Dressings and Sauces. Italian dressing took second place with just 10 percent

  • In 1954 ranch dressing was invented at Hidden Valley Ranch, a dude ranch near Santa Barbara, California.
  • Ranch dressing has been the best-selling salad dressing in the United States since 1992, overtaking Italian dressing.
  • Hidden Valley brand owns the right to ‘the Original Ranch®‘ After decades of trademark lawsuits similar products can be labeled ‘ranch style’ or simply ‘ranch’
  • While popular in the United States and Canada, ranch dressing is virtually unknown in most of the world
  •  Since 1972 Hidden Valley Ranch has been owned by Clorox.
  • Ranch dressing was created in 1949 by a plumber-turned-cowboy.  While working as a contract plumber in Alaska, Steve Henson started cooking for his coworkers and perfecting his buttermilk dressing recipe. Five years later he moved to California with his wife Gayle and bought a ranch.
  • His famous buttermilk dressing soon became a staple at the dinner table of Hidden Valley Ranch and before long the Hensons started selling it to guests and local supermarkets. Over two decades later in 1972, the couple sold their name and recipe to Clorox for $8 million. Not bad for a little buttermilk, mayo, and herbs.
  • Doritos made it famous.  Stores first sold the dry mix until shelf-stable bottles of the creamy dressing were introduced in 1983. By the time Cool Ranch Doritos hit the grocery scene in 1986, the ranch phenomenon was officially here to stay.
  • There’s an entire restaurant devoted to ranch dressing.  You may think you’re in love with ranch dressing, but you don’t have anything on the owners of Twisted Ranch in St. Louis, Missouri. Every single item on the menu contains one of their 31 house-made ranch dressings.
  • Domino’s started the ranch-pizza combo.  Drizzling ranch dressing over your pizza—or dipping it—is a controversial topic, but where did the technique get started? There are different accounts from over the years, but Domino’s started including ranch dressing with their chicken wings in 1994. From there, pizza lovers began dipping their crusts in that heavenly dressing, and the rest is history.
  • The Average American Consumes Ranch dressing 15 Times Per Year.
  • Hidden Valley Ranch sold $440 million worth of salad dressing in 2015.
  • Hidden Valley Ranch wasn’t the first to the ranch game. In Texas, recipes for buttermilk dressing date back as far as 1937. Since buttermilk was more readily accessible on the High Plains than vegetable based fats, cowboys enjoyed creamy buttermilk based dressings for a long time.
  • Today’s ranch dressing bears little-to-no resemblance to the original.  In the time of its creation, ranch had a few basic ingredients: buttermilk, mayonnaise, spices, and herbs. Wholesome and caloric, but sadly perishable. In the quest to perfect a shelf-stable alternative, Clorox and its competitors Kraft, Ken’s, and Wish-Bone created soybean and canola oil based alternatives. Other fun ingredients include MSG, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, and calcium disodium EDTA among others.

Sources:

Foodimentary

Taste of Home

Delish

Thrillist