Friday, April 19, 2013

Homemade Ranch Dressing

We live in a remote location right now.  Don't feel sorry for us.  We live in the beautiful Australian outback.  (By the way, I have not seen a Bloomin' Onion since we moved here.  I don't think anyone from Outback Steakhouse has ever been outback. Just saying.)  We wake up to this every morning:



Well, actually this is from our camping trip last weekend, but again...don't feel too sorry for us.  We actually LOVE where we live.  It's just that you can't find real Ranch dressing in Australia.  You can't ship it in because customs considers it a dairy product and will confiscate it...or so I've been told.  So I had to dig around and find a recipe that I could make here with ingredients that are available locally.  I noted the substitutions I made next to the original ingredients.  Many thanks to The Crafty Blog Stalker for saving my sisters a trip to Walmart and the Post Office for the store bought powder.

Dry Ingredients:

1/4 cup Black Pepper
1 1/2 cup Parsley Flakes
1/2 cup Garlic Salt
2 Tbsp Kosher Salt (I substituted Cooking Salt)
1/4 cup Granulated Garlic
1/4 cup Granulated Onion (I substituted Onion Flakes)
2 Tbsp Dill Weed

Wet Ingredients:

1 cup Mayonnaise
1 cup Buttermilk
1 1/2 cup Sour Cream
1 tsp Lemon Juice

 
Start by putting all the dry ingredients into a gallon sized Ziploc bag.  Close the bag and shake to combine the ingredients.  This makes about 3 1/2 cups of Ranch Dressing Mix.  I am storing the mix in dry canning jars.  Any dry sealed container will work just fine.

Put all the wet ingredients in a bowl with 2 Tbsp of the dry mix.  Whip with a whisk until it is well combined.  Refrigerate for at least 2 hours (the longer the better) to let the flavors marry.  (That's really a cooking term.  I just looked it up on Google.  Everything on the Internet is true.)

This makes a lot of fresh Ranch dressing.  Since it doesn't have all the preservatives, I'd only suggest keeping it until a few days after the expiration date on the Buttermilk or Sour Cream, whichever expires first.