- Ranch is a dipping sauce worthy of your wings,
a dressing fit to drown your kale,
a flavor so essential to American culture,
it's sometimes just referred to as "Cool American" overseas.
Over the past half century,
ranch has become a billion dollar industry,
the most popular salad dressing in the US,
and an endless fountain of increasingly absurd memes.
This is how an Alaskan plumber
and a literal ranch helped bring the dressing to fruition
and how the internet helped turn it into
a glorious herb-speckled symbol of American food excess.
1949, Steve Henson, a plumbing contractor
from the small town of Thayer, Nebraska,
moves to a remote region of Alaska with his wife,
Gayle, for a new high paying gig to keep his crew happy.
Remember, they are in remote Alaska.
Steve occasionally cooks large family-style meals.
While working with limited, mostly dry,
non-perishable ingredients,
he develops a new salad dressing mix featuring buttermilk,
herbs like thyme, dill,
and a ton of onion and garlic powder.
This improvised Alaskan medley was the very first iteration
of ranch dressing.
But, let's pause real quick.
While this is the advent of ranch as we know it,
we can't pretend like Steve just got the idea
out of thin freezing Alaskan air.
Cowboys in the American Southwest had been adding
creamy buttermilk-based dressing to their meals
since the mid 1930s,
which is a clear influence on Henson's creation.
Yee-haw! Back to the timeline.
By 1954, Steve and Gayle found so much success
in the north, they were able to functionally retire
at the tender age of 35.
They moved to California and bought a run-down property
called Sweetwater Ranch in the San Marcos Pass.
And they renamed it Hidden Valley Ranch.
Mmhmm, yup. The Henson's opened up Hidden Valley
to guests, complete with a steakhouse,
where they put Steve's old ranch recipe
on basically everything.
The ranch became increasingly popular,
thanks in large part to Steve's ranch sauce,
which patrons would take home by the jar full as souvenirs.
The Henson's start making dry package kits
so people can make his dressing at home,
selling it at local stores
and mailing it around the country.
Over the next two decades,
the success of ranch overtakes the success
of the actual ranch,
and the Henson's turn their attention
to producing ranch packets full-time.
By the 1970s, the Henson's re-retire
and sell off both Hidden Valley, the literal ranch,
and Hidden Valley Ranch, the dressing,
to The Clorox Company,
who began mass-producing bottles of Hidden Valley,
lining supermarket shelves, Midwestern buffets,
and the stomachs of millions of celery-dipping Americans.
1986, Cool Ranch Doritos are released,
and this acts like a gateway drug for consumers.
People start imagining ranch as a flavor
and not just a salad dressing.
By the 1990s, big ass pizza chains
like Domino's and Pizza Hut,
add buffalo wings to their menus,
complete with a side of ranch for dipping.
And they soon realized what small ass pizza shops
around the country have been noticing,
people are dipping their pizza into ranch now.
Naturally, pizza purists are aghast
at this apparent affront
to the sanctity of time-honored pizza tradition.
Our official opinion on this? Who the f*** cares?!
Put whatever you want on your pizza!
Anyway, a generation of 90s kids grew up
with ranch sitting on their table
and deeply embedded in their hearts,
which is important because by the 2000s,
we are in the age of the internet.
As ranch-loving kids become ranch-loving adults,
the dressing becomes a Halloween costume.
We witness the carbonated horrors of a ranch-flavored soda
and the copious caloric ranch means start flowing harder
than the ranch dressing fountain
Hidden Valley starts selling for a cool $250.
At this point, nearly every condiment brand tosses
their cowboy hats into the ranch game
and Hidden Valley releases over 70 ranch re re remixes,
like cucumber ranch, bacon ranch,
and even vegan ranch, which kind of sounds like an oxymoron.
Anyway, the condiment, sometimes called "hillbilly ketchup",
starts making its way into fine dining.
Much to the dismay of some writers,
one of whom actually claims that ranch
is what's wrong with America,
while NPR admits America is floating in a pool of ranch,
uh metaphorically, of course.
Though, that would be awesome.
And while Katy Perry has ranch on her rider,
and Saweetie went viral for putting a buttload
of ranch on her spaghetti,
comedian Eric Andre is the undisputed king
of the creamy condiment;
thanks in large part to his classic Legalize Ranch skit,
and his short-lived ranch dispensary.
But Thrillist isn't immune to ranch mania either,
as one of our more misguided staffers tries eating ranch
on basically every food we could think of.
And there's even an entire restaurant
in St. Louis dedicated solely to ranch-based dishes.
So now as we bask at the end of your meteoric rise,
we must salute you ranch dressing.
You might just be tangy buttermilk
flecked with some dry herbs. But dammit,
if you don't make me get a little misty-eyed
about the pizza parties of my youth
and hopefully, the ranch fountains
that await me in my future.
Because I am definitely gonna have one of those
at my wedding!
Book it!
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