Why Your Store-Bought Ranch Is Never As Good As A Restaurant's

For some reason, squeezing a bottle of store-bought ranch over your salad doesn't give quite the same satisfaction as digging into a delicious, ranch-ridden restaurant salad. When you try to recreate that same salad, you're left having put in more effort for less flavor. But why? The answer is twofold. Most restaurants make their own in-house ranch, which tastes better than the store-bought stuff for a variety of reasons. But even those restaurants that do use commercially-bottled ranch have tricky ways of doctoring it up so that it tastes much better than the standard bottle.

A big reason for the taste difference is that store-bought dressings are built differently than homemade dressings because they need to be produced with ingredients that are shelf-stable (or can be processed to be shelf-stable). Hidden Valley Ranch, for example, is made with mainly buttermilk, but most homemade ranch dressing recipes include some combination of buttermilk, sour cream, yogurt, and mayonnaise. While mayo is shelf-stable unopened, sour cream and yogurt are not. With that said, store-bought ranch lacks the tang of many homemade ranch recipes.

The reality is that restaurant ranch has more flavor freedom than shelf-stable ranch does. Restaurants can use those other perishable ingredients to build out their ranch, plus they can taste-test it as needed to make sure it has just the right flavor balance. And as mention, those restaurants that do use ranch from a bottle still usually take steps to make the ranch taste better before it gets to your plate. The addition of fresh herbs or garlic can mask any commercial taste, and they can brighten it up with other ingredients like a hint of lemon juice.

If you don't want to go through the effort of making your own restaurant-style ranch, you can still use the method of adding more flavor to the store-bought version. Chop up some fresh dill and parsley, then add a squeeze of lemon juice and some garlic powder. The end result might not be the kind you'd eat with a spoon from your favorite eatery, but it will almost certainly turn out better than it started.