Homemade Herby Ranch Dressing
Make your own salad dressing from scratch with this Homemade Herby Ranch Dressing recipe! This dressing doubles as a dip for vegetables (or even wings or chips), and it tastes amazing.
We have a confession: we love ranch. We love it on our pizza, as a dip for chicken wings or vegetables or even potato chips, and on our salads. But we’re also incredibly picky about our ranch. We are not fans of that popular bottle brand that many people love because we find it too sweet and not fresh-tasting enough.
This Homemade Herby Ranch Dressing is full of fresh herbs, balanced in flavor, and leans more savory than sweet, as we think a good ranch dressing should. It’s also super easy to make at home as long as you have an immersion blender, regular blender, or even a food processor. (You could also make this without blending, but you won’t get the same strong herb flavor that way.)
Homemade Herby Ranch Dressing Ingredients
This dressing is tasty and fresh and easy to make. You can whip it up super quickly too, which means those carrots sitting in that drawer in your fridge will have a friend in no time.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- Sour cream – sour cream makes up part of the base of this dressing. It’s creamy and tangy and delicious with herbs.
- Mayonnaise – mayo is the rest of the dressing’s base. It provides a creamy texture and savory flavor.
- Milk – a little milk will help thin out this dressing. Use less milk to make this dressing more of a dip or more milk to make the dressing thinner.
- Sugar – while we don’t like overly sweet ranch dressing, a little sugar is necessary to provide balance of flavor and a touch of sweetness.
- Lemon juice – many recipes use buttermilk or vinegar for acidity, but we’re usually partial to the flavor of citrus in dressings. Lemon provides a nice tang and subtle citrusy sweetness that pairs beautifully with the fresh herbs.
- Fresh herbs – for the herbs, we use fresh chives, parsley, and dill in this ranch. They give the dressing a bright herby flavor and also turn it a light green hue, which we love!
- Salt and pepper – everyone has different preferences for saltiness so be sure to taste your dressing and add salt accordingly. We believe a good ranch dressing has a liberal amount of cracked black pepper too, so we recommend using a couple of turns of a pepper grinder.
How to Make This Dressing
First, add the ranch ingredients to a high-sided container. Using an immersion blender, blend up the dressing until it’s smooth. If you don’t have an immersion blender, you could use a countertop or personal blender to combine the ingredients into a dressing. You could also use a food processor, but it won’t blend up the herbs as smoothly. It will still be good, but it might not taste quite as herby because the herbs won’t be as blended.
Serve this dressing as a dip with fresh vegetables, chips, or wings, or toss it with lettuce and your favorite salad ingredients for a fresh and delicious meal option.
Homemade Herby Ranch Dressing
Ingredients
- ⅔ cup sour cream
- ½ cup mayonnaise
- ¼ cup milk
- ⅛ tsp sugar
- 1 ½ tbsp lemon juice
- ½ cup chopped fresh parsley
- 2 tbsp diced fresh chives
- 2 tbsp chopped fresh dill
- ½ tsp sea salt, (or more, depending on preference)
- ½ tsp cracked black pepper
Instructions
- Add the ranch ingredients to a high-sided container.⅔ cup sour cream, ½ cup mayonnaise, ¼ cup milk, ⅛ tsp sugar, 1 ½ tbsp lemon juice, ½ cup chopped fresh parsley, 2 tbsp diced fresh chives, 2 tbsp chopped fresh dill, ½ tsp sea salt, ½ tsp cracked black pepper
- Using an immersion blender, blend up the dressing until it’s smooth. You could use a countertop or personal blender or a food processor (the latter won’t blend it up as well, though).
- Serve as a dip with fresh vegetables, chips, or wings, or toss it with lettuce and your favorite salad ingredients for a fresh and delicious meal option.
