BrainStuff Classics: What is 'Ranch' Flavor?

Ranch is the most popular salad dressing in the United States, but what is that flavor supposed to be? Learn the history and modern make-up of ranch flavor in this classic episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff.
I'm your friendly neighborhood host Lauren vog Obam here with
a classic episode from our former host, Christian Sager. This
one seeks to answer a question that plagues pizza dippers
and wing eaters alike. What on earth is ranch flavor? Hey,

(00:25):
brain stuff, this is Christian Sager. If you have spent
time in the US or Canada, then you have heard
of ranch dressing. It was invented by a guy named
Steve Henson in the late forties to the early fifties
when he worked as a plumbing contractor in Alaska. In
the fifties, he and his wife moved near Santa Barbara,
where they opened the Hidden Valley. Dude. Ranch sounds cool, right,

(00:48):
Visiting guests like the ranch itself, but they loved steve
salad dressing. Eventually, the Henson's just started selling that and
the rest is history. Since ranch salad dress has been
the most popular dressing in the US. But ranch isn't
a flavor, right, Okay? People outside of the US and Canada,

(01:08):
thanks for bearing with me through the history lesson, but
you may have tasted ranch flavoring before. Just under a
different name. In the Netherlands. For instance, cool Ranch doritos
are called cool American doritos. That weird American flavor you
see advertised in the grocery store. That's ranch, and the
main taste in ranch is buttermilk. I know, I know,

(01:31):
but it's not quite that simple. Otherwise people would just
pour buttermilk on stuff, right. The original ranch recipe also
includes mayonnaise, parsley, pepper, salt, a little time, garlic, onion powder,
and msg. It's a dairy heavy recipe, which means the
original version doesn't keep very well, and that means, in turn,

(01:53):
the famous ranch dressing flying off shelves today is not
the same stuff that Steve was whipping up for his guests. Instead,
the result is some heady, complicated work by the eggheads
at Chlorox. Yes, that Clorox. They bought Hidden Valley in
nineteen seventy two. They had a huge problem though. You
can't just plot bottles of buttermilk and mayo on an

(02:16):
unrefrigerated shelf and hope for the best, So they started
tinkering around with the recipe, practicing the arcane art of
food science. They needed something that's still pretty much tasted
like Steve's recipe, but was shelf stable, meaning it could
sit around on a truck or in a grocery store
long enough for customers to find and buy it. The

(02:37):
details of Clorox's work remained secret, but it is a
safe bet that Steve's original recipe didn't include things like
calcium dis soda, mine, ethel leah diah santa. I can't
even say this word. It's safe to say that he
didn't do it. By three, they had cooked up a
version of ranch that could stay on shelves for up
to one hundred and fifty days. The first four ingredients

(03:01):
of modern ranch dressing our vegetable oil, water, egg, yilk,
and sugar. You'll also see disodium phosphate, zanthem gum, and
the ever popular calcium disodium. Hmm. Sounds good, right, and
if you ask food reviewers like j Kenji Lopez Alt,
most shelf stable recipes end up sacrificing flavor at the

(03:22):
benefit of convenience. But you've probably also noticed that numerous
companies make different ranch dressings. There's the Ken Steakhouse stuff
that Paul Newman guy. The list goes on, and given
ranches popularity more competitors will enter the fray. It's inspiring
when you think about it. A multimillion dollar industry sprang

(03:43):
up because a guy in Alaska apparently decided he was
tired of eating mayo and buttermilk separately. Today's episode was
written by Ben Bollin and produced by Tyler Clang Brain Stuff.
It's a production of iHeart Radios Stuff Works. To hear
more about Ranch, check out an episode of my food
podcast Saver. The episode is called Ranch Dude, and Ben

(04:07):
guests on it, and of course, for more on this
and lots of other topics, visit our home planet, how
Stuff Works dot com. Plus for more podcasts from my
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