BrainStuff Classics: What is 'Ranch' Flavor?

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, 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, 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,

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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 Heart Radio, visit the Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,