Ranch Dressing

by Vicki Reich, from the August 2006 Newsletter

I’m not sure what has been attracting me to white food for our taste tests lately (I love vegetables very much and they are anything but white) but once again this month I subjected my faithful testers to another white food. This time it was ranch dressing. I think the idea came to me several months ago while I was rearranging the dressings and I noticed that almost every brand of dressing made some type of ranch.

Of course my first question was “which one tastes the best?” The Hog Heaven Handspinners noticed immediately that they were all white but were quite pleased that I had throw in a bag of bright orange baby carrot with which to test them.

We tasted six different brands and ate a whole bag of carrots in the process.

First up was Toby’s Ranch Dressing (12 oz, $3.59) It’s thick and dilly. It has a good vinegary taste with a hint of sweetness. Some tasters said it reminded them of salad bar dressing. We sell Toby’s out of the cooler.

Follow Your Heart Low Fat Ranch Dressing (12 oz, $2.45) is also sold in the cooler. It was the only low fat dressing we tasted and you could tell. It doesn’t have that rich mouth feel of the full fat dressings but it is good in its own right. It has a good ranch flavor but it does dissipate quickly after the first taste.

Annie’s Natural Organic Cowgirl Ranch (8 oz, $3.39) was quite salty and didn’t taste much like traditional ranch dressing. It has a very strong taste of chives and tasted more like tarter sauce.

Newman’s Own Ranch Dressing (8 oz, $2.39) has a really cute picture of Paul in a cowboy hat on the label. The dressing itself was not as cute but it had a strong vinegar and onion flavor. Some tester described it as sharp but others said it was mayonnaissey. I like looking at Paul in my fridge.

Cardini’s Parmesan Ranch Dressing (12 oz, $3.15) was very tasty and liked by almost all the testers but it doesn’t really taste like ranch. It is very cheesy tasting which is good if you’re not expecting ranch. We were expecting ranch.

The last dressing to accept the dips of our carrots was Drew’s Buttermilk Ranch (12 oz, 2.95). It is vinegary and a bit salty but otherwise did not impress the tasters with any other adjectives.

The moral of the story is…I’m not sure there is one this time. There was no overwhelming consensus among the testers, although, if you don’t have your heart set on ranch, you might want to try Cardini’s. I personally preferred Toby’s if I wasn’t watching my fat intake and Follow Your Heart since I am.

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