Ranch dressing is a savory, creamy American salad dressing usually made from buttermilk, salt, garlic, onion, black pepper, and herbs (commonly chives, parsley and dill), mixed into a sauce based on mayonnaise or another oil emulsion. Sour cream and yogurt are sometimes used in addition to, or as a substitute for, buttermilk and mayonnaise.
Ranch has been the best-selling salad dressing in the United States since 1992, when it overtook Italian dressing. It is also popular in the United States and Canada as a dip, and as a flavoring for potato chips and other foods. In 2017, 40% of Americans named ranch as their favorite dressing, according to a study by the Association for Dressings and Sauces. Ranch dressing is most prominently used in the Midwest region.
History
Development
The original Ranch salad dressing recipe was concocted in the early 1950s by Steve Henson (1918–2007), a Thayer, Nebraska, native working as a plumbing contractor in the Anchorage area, while cooking to feed his work crews. Henson retired from plumbing at age 35 and moved with his wife Gayle to Santa Barbara County, California, where in 1956 he purchased a guest ranch in San Marcos Pass and renamed it Hidden Valley Ranch.
Henson began selling the dry ingredients in packages by mail for 75 cents a piece, and eventually devoted every room in his house to the operation.
Commercialization
Manufacturing of the mix was later moved to San Jose, then to Colorado, and then to Sparks, Nevada, in 1972. In 1992, ranch surpassed Italian dressing to become the best-selling salad dressing in the United States.
Production
As of 2002, Clorox subsidiary Hidden Valley Manufacturing Company was producing ranch packets and bottled dressings at two large factories, in Reno, Nevada, and Wheeling, Illinois.
Variations
In the Southwestern United States, there is a variant from New Mexican cuisine called "green chile ranch" which adds green New Mexico chile pepper as an ingredient. Regional restaurant chains, like Dion's, produce and sell green chile ranch, as do others.
Other variations include avocado, roasted red pepper, and truffle.
Trademark lawsuit
One side effect of the adoption of the name "ranch" for Henson's new salad dressing was that it resulted in a federal lawsuit over whether the phrase "ranch style" could be used to describe competing salad dressing products. Since the early 1930s, there had also been an existing brand of pinto beans branded as "Ranch Style Beans", now marketed by Conagra Brands.
In 1975, Waples-Platter, the Texas manufacturer and founder of Ranch Style Beans, sued Kraft Foods and General Foods for trademark infringement for their "ranch style" products, even though Waples-Platter had declined to enter the salad dressing market itself over concerns about rapid spoilage.
The case was tried in 1976 before federal judge Eldon Brooks Mahon in Fort Worth, Texas. Mahon ruled in favor of Waples-Platter in a lengthy opinion, which described the various "ranch style" and "ranch" products then available in the 1970s in the United States, of which many had been created to compete against Hidden Valley Ranch. Mahon's opinion cites evidence indicating lawyers had compelled Henson himself to sit for a deposition during the discovery process to testify about the history of Hidden Valley Ranch.
Mahon specifically noted that Hidden Valley Ranch and Waples-Platter had no dispute with each other, though he also said Hidden Valley Ranch was simultaneously suing General Foods in a separate federal case in California. The only issue before the Texas federal district court was that Waples-Platter was disputing the right of other American food manufacturers to compete against Hidden Valley Ranch by using the label "ranch style".