Ranch Nation
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
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.
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).
If you really want an eye-opening flavor experience, try dipping pizza in toum (Lebanese garlic sauce).
For more fun, try Lebanese pizza a la Manoosh in New South Wales.
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.
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...
Shots fired!
For the non-American's out there "Ranch" is basically an oily, less flavorful version of Tzatziki, where the white stuff is based on mayonnaise rather than greek yogurt.
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.
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.