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The true story of Hidden Valley Ranch is where rugged individualism, adventurous cowboys, and the romance of the wide-open American West meet food science, corporate conglomerates, and capitalism. Hidden Valley Ranch started out more or less by accident, then became a cottage industry, and then became a salad dressing superstar. Let’s dive into Hidden Valley Ranch’s backstory and see how it came to be such a popular salad dressing. We first introduced bottled Hidden Valley® Ranch dressing in the ’80s.
It wasn’t long before guests were hounding Steve for jars of his ranch dressing to bring home. Austin Koeller praises the chicken bacon ranch pizza at Godfather’s. Many people in their 20s and 30s won’t touch a chicken strip without ranch. They also love it with pizza, french fries, onion rings, Tater Tots and mozzarella sticks. Henson made it the house dressing at Hidden Valley Ranch, a California guest ranch they took over and renamed in 1954.
The Untold Truth Of Hidden Valley Ranch
His buttermilk sauce recipe soon became a ranch staple, and the Hensons soon began selling it to guests and local supermarkets. Owner Steve Henson began making clothes for his team while working in Alaska, and later took them to the ranch, where they became popular with guests. The ranch was originally created by plumber and builder Steve Henson, who invented clothing while working in the Alaskan bush in the 1950s.
I don't know if there is any better combination than ranch and buffalo wings. Also anyone who's ever bought hidden valley ranch premade I highly suggest you buy the seasoning pack, buttermilk, and mayo and make it yourself. Just remember what you're eating is half mayo and half buttermilk.
Who Invented Ranch Dressing
In the late 80s, the company released a variety of dry dip mixes under the Hidden Valley Ranch brand. It’s the kind of topping serious chefs correctly disdained for decades as extravagant and trashy. Ranch dressing is a condiment made of buttermilk or sour cream, mayonnaise, minced green onion, garlic powder, and other seasonings mixed into a sauce. Ranch dressing is one of the two most popular styles of salad dressing in the United States, together with Italian dressing. In 1949, Thayer, Nebraska, native Steve Henson (1918–2007) moved with his wife to the Anchorage, Alaska, area, where he worked as a plumbing contractor for three years in the remote Alaskan bush.
The couple also created a new type of sauce that serves as a dry topping that customers can take home to mix with buttermilk and mayonnaise. According to the Omaha World-Herald, the demand for Henson’s buttermilk dressing has become so great that they have created a packaged dry mix that home cooks can simply add buttermilk to. Soon, food giants saw an opportunity in ranch dressing and started using it as a dip for fries, nachos, pizza slices, and as one of the main ingredients in hamburgers. Ranch dressing is a type of salad dressing made up of buttermilk, salt, garlic, onion, herbs like chives, parsley and dill and spices like black pepper, paprika and ground mustard seed.
Is salad dressing an American thing?
Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes before serving. Yes, ranch dressing is safe for pregnant women to consume, but with some caveats, it should be pasteurized because of buttermilk and sour cream. Note that most commercial ranch dressings are safe for pregnant women to consume.
It’s fine if it has been heated with the Microwave. If it has been sitting out, open or sealed for a period of time, then no. A smooth and creamy dressing blended with Black Truffles, perfect for drizzling over multiple dishes to add unique truffle flavor.
Several people that read the story without a photo were very surprised to learn the couple are black. Not exactly healthy but so delicious you don't want to go back to the bottled dressing. I've eaten at the Ranch House in Ojai, CA a couple of times. To win the bejeweled bottle of ranch, contestants were simply required to retweet a Hidden Valley National Ranch Day post.
If you’re seriously in need of soaking up the brand’s history, the first restaurant that served Hidden Valley Ranch dressing back in 1963, Cold Spring Tavern, is still open today. The Herald reports that Henson got his start in 1949 as a plumbing contractor in Alaska—a job that, weirdly enough, involved cooking for his coworkers. Not sure why they decided the plumber was the man to handle the food, but I’m sure glad they did.
