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Easy Homemade Ranch Dressing Recipe and a Crudite Platter

Homemade Ranch Dressing

This homemade ranch dressing recipe is so easy a six-year-old can make it! You’ll never go back to the bottled stuff after tasting homemade ranch dressing. It works well for an appetizer of veggies and dip alongside some of these other healthy easy party foods. It’s keto friendly!

My son has been in charge of making our family’s homemade ranch dressing since he was seven years old. Though we are passing the task on to younger siblings as he gets older (we teach the little ones how to make ranch dressing in the Kids Cook Real Food eCourse). We keep our homemade ranch dressing super thick with a sour cream base since we mainly use it for dipping veggies rather than on a salad.

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What is in Ranch Dressing?

If you look at a bottle of store-bought ranch you’ll see a lengthy list of ingredients, including rancid vegetable oils (like genetically modified soybean oil), gums, fillers, added sugar (most kids already get way too much), monosodim glutamate (this is a deal breaker for us) and flavorings (even the “natural” flavorings can be bad for you). Plus other non-food items like disodium guanylate and disodium inosinate. That doesn’t really line up with the four pillars of Kitchen Stewardship®. We keep it real here!

Our homemade ranch dressing uses simple, whole food ingredients. In the past we’ve tried a mixture of homemade mayonnaise and yogurt, mayonnaise and sour cream, then graduated to just sour cream since it was so much easier.

Homemade Ranch Dressing and Dip, keto ranch recipe

You can easily switch up the base to use any combination of mayonnaise, yogurt, buttermilk or sour cream. You can even try using coconut milk yogurt if you are dairy free. Each base will have its own flavor and will make your ranch thinner or thicker. They’re all delicious!

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ranch party dressing dip

Homemade Ranch Dressing Recipe

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  • Author: Katie Kimball
  • Prep Time: 5 mins
  • Total Time: 5 mins
  • Category: condiment

Ingredients

Units Scale
  • 1 c. sour cream or plain homemade yogurt (half and half makes it pourable, typically)
  • 1 Tbs. red wine vinegar
  • 2 cloves crushed fresh garlic (less for young children)
  • 1/2 tsp. onion powder
  • 1/41/2 tsp. each: dried parsley, dill weed, chives
  • a few shakes cayenne pepper
  • black pepper to taste, preferably freshly ground
  • salt (Use the code kitchenstewardship for 15% off of your first purchase) to taste (not always needed with the fresh garlic)


ship kroger


Instructions

  1. Mix and serve. Store in the refrigerator.
  2. Lasts as long as the sour cream would have lasted.

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The Old Way
This is how we used to do it, to give you another option.

3/4 c. homemade mayo
1/2 c. sour cream or plain yogurt
1/2 tsp cilantro or chives
1/2 tsp parsley
1/2 tsp dill weed
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4-1/2 tsp onion salt
1/4 tsp ground pepper

All the seasonings are dried. Just mix and enjoy!

Homemade Ranch Dressing

Ranch dressing lasts at least 2 weeks in the refrigerator – as long as your mayo and sour cream or yogurt would last. It’s the dill weed that makes it excellent, in my opinion. Adapted from Passionate Homemaking.

Your kids can learn to cook, even if you don’t know where to start

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I’m so pleased to offer a little gift from our family to yours, a knife skills lesson as a free preview of the full cooking eCourse!

How to Serve Ranch Dressing

I first saw the word “crudite platter” while playing Catch Phrase with friends. None of us, of course, had heard the word before, so we looked it up. It’s been a favorite word of mine ever since!

What is a crudite platter?

That’s what you serve with dinner when you don’t want to use a microwave, don’t have or don’t feel like using a steamer basket, and still want to have a side of vegetables with dinner. A crudite platter is a plate of raw vegetables with a dip on the side. More choices are fancier, but not necessary.

The Importance of Raw Vegetables

Raw foods are very healthy for us. We as Americans probably should be eating more raw foods. Raw veggies might just be the answer to my steamer problem (it’s a pain to get out and only fits in my large pots).

Yes, I used to feel like I was copping out a little serving a crudite platter as our vegetable. Isn’t dinner supposed to be a HOT meal? It was a great success for me to let that idea go and realize that we liked eating raw veggies, especially if I had a particularly yummy dip for them, like this homemade ranch dressing.

So I invite you to let go of your perfectionism and impress your family by breaking out the “crudite platter” tonight with flair and gusto!

Do you like ranch dressing with your raw veggies? Have you ever made your own?

Get more salad dressing recipes:

Unless otherwise credited, photos are owned by the author or used with a license from Canva or Deposit Photos.

32 thoughts on “Easy Homemade Ranch Dressing Recipe and a Crudite Platter”

  1. I use labne for my ranch dressing base, sometimes with buttermilk but mostly just labne. Just thought I would give everyone another suggestion.






    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Kim,
      You could certainly add kefir to thin it out, but I’m not sure it would make any of the other cultured products last any longer.

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  3. SO good! Though next time I will definitely use only one clove of garlic 🙂 I’m wondering, is there any way I can lacto-ferment this so it lasts longer? I thought I had read something about that, but now I don’t see it…maybe I was thinking of the mayo recipe (which I made at the same time)??

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Mindy,
      It was the mayo recipe. Sour cream and yogurt (both can be used as the base here) would be already fermented and last quite a while, and if you LF the mayo, that’ll extend it too. 🙂 Katie

  4. I have made this recipe twice now in the last month. The first time I went strictly by the “new way” method. But organic mayo is expensive and we are watching calories here at my house.

    So I decided to try all yogurt (Stonyfield Plain – I ran out of time this week and had to buy it rather than make my own.)

    Not as creamy as the first way, but definitely still delicious. No one was complaining when they were sampling before dinner.

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Amanda,
      I think the spices go great in a lot of bases, don’t they? I use 100% sour cream thinned with a little yogurt now, and we love it. 🙂 Katie

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  6. I’m glad to see a Ranch recipe w/o mayo — we buy conventional mayo at the store still, and I wasn’t about to waste my time making “homemade” ranch just to put regular mayo in it. (Think: soybean oil, etc).

    I plan to try this recipe (the updated one) – thanks.

    1. Sorry — re-reading, my comment doesn’t make a lot of sense. I meant, I like that you put in the notes that using 100% sourcream is an option.

  7. We can’t stop eating this!!!! Honestlyrwnch dressing was the one thing my husband was missing and the other recipes I tried just weren’t quite right. This one was perfect, thank you!!

    1. Whoops…that’s what I get for trying to comment using my phone. That should have said *honestly, ranch dressing*

  8. Has anyone tried making this with just sour cream, or a sour cream/yogurt mix? I’m trying to replace my favorite ranch dip, which is just sour cream plus store bought mix (which I don’t really want to be buying, I just never have time to figure out an alternative when I need it).

    1. Michelle,
      I would totally go for it if I were you…In fact, we’re out, and out of mayo, so I may be joining you in the experiment tomorrow! I can’t honestly imagine that it would be a bust. 🙂 Katie

    2. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Michelle, tried it and loved it! Maybe even better than with mayo… 🙂 Katie

  9. HOW can one have Ranch dressing without buttermillk? Gotta have it. Mine tastes just like the buttermilk Ranch at the store.

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  15. I made Kelly’s ranch dressing and I added about 1.5 tsp of lemon juice b/c I thought it was lacking a “tangy” quality that I associate with ranch dressing. I probably need to get my hands on some fresh dill!

    1. I use buttermilk in my ranch which adds a little tang. Have also used a little yogurt for part of the sour cream. I do use fresh garlic which gives it lots of flavor, added nutrients and bite! Sometimes I add a little jalapeno or dried chives too, depending on the flavor that sounds most compelling at the time. My kids eat ALL of it, no matter the particular variances. Ranch addicts!

      1. Bebe,
        I do the fresh garlic sometimes, but jalapeno is an excellent idea. I bet it will be hub’s fav!
        🙂 Katie

  16. I loved this. Thanks so much. I am on a make it from scratch trip too. I loves the dill in it. I am going to add a bit more the next time I make it.

  17. This was a great recipe! My family loved it! I’m thrilled that I can now make small amounts of Ranch dressing at home because I’d normally buy a bottle, use it a few times and then it would sit in the fridge until it was 6 months past the expiration date. Thank you so much for sharing it with us all!

    1. This just made me chuckle… our house is quite the opposite and it’s the teenagers who are the most avid Ranch devotees. Seriously, get a group of teens together and ask them if they like Ranch dressing, and then ask them “on what?”… they even like to dip their pizza in it! It will have you either rolling your eyes or rolling on the floor! Good thing we can give them a real food version and let them dip to their heart’s content. (;

      1. Yes! My teenage son thinks I’m killing him by depriving him of store-bought ranch. He loves it but honestly a little ranch and he’ll try anything. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make healthier versions – that he’ll enjoy.

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