I was browsing through the $5 Dinner Mom’s website when I came across her ingenious idea to mix up a big batch of seasonings at one time for an easy homemade Ranch dressing.
Quick and Easy Homemade Ranch Dip Recipe
Once your spice mixture has been made it’s a very simple process to add your perishable ingredient whenever you’re in the mood for some homemade dressing. Talk about being efficient! You could even prepare them ahead of time in separate bags or containers to mix up once you’re ready.
A Sour Cream Ranch Dip for Everyone
Now we prefer a Ranch dip over a dressing at our house (especially since it magically makes my 6-year-old eat twice as many carrots as normal) so below is a modified version that turns Erin’s spice mixture into a Ranch dip instead of a Ranch dressing.
This gives it a thicker consistency overall, making it a perfect dip for veggie trays that the whole family will enjoy. It’s a lot cheaper than pre bought spice mixes and easily more nutritious than the bottled stuff. No preservatives here! Just a few simple ingredients that make for a fresh and easy to make dip.
How to Reduce the Fat Content of This Dip Recipe
If you want to save on calories and dollars at the same time, there’s an incredibly easy substitution you can make here! Greek yogurt doesn’t just add substantial protein content to the mix, but is slightly less calorie dense than cream cheese. (Some people may prefer the flavor, too!)
To use Greek yogurt instead of sour cream, simply swap the sour cream in the ranch dip recipe below for equal parts Greek yogurt.
Here’s a little video showing you how simple it is to make! Enjoy!
Ranch Flavored Dip
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoon parsley (dried)
- 1 teaspoon dill (dried)
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- ½ teaspoon basil (dried)
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- sour cream (for serving)
Instructions
- Mix together the first six ingredients down to the pepper. Store in an airtight container.
- When you are ready to make the dip stir 1 tablespoon of the spice mixture together with ½ cup sour cream. Serve with fresh sliced veggies or whole-wheat pretzels.
- Save the remaining dry spice mixture in spice cabinet or pantry for another day.
This is yummy and super easy! I love that it makes enough spice to make the dip a few times, very efficient!
I love, love, love this recipe!!! I too added a bit of salt and a little more of the seasoning and I used Greek yogurt sour cream. My 15 month old son loves to dip his bell pepper strips in it! I can’t complain!!!
I ended up adding about 1 tsp., and after the flavors absorbed for several hours in 2 cups of Nancy’s cultured sour cream in the fridge, the saltiness was perfect. I cannot imagine not adding it. I served at a party, and everyone RAVED about it! Was just curious if there being no salt in the recipe was a typo. It is so flavorful I suppose you wouldn’t need it…but I added it since one of the things that makes the ranch dip packets so tasty is the salt. I used unrefined REAL salt, which has health benefits (unlike the processed sodium chloride or table salt in most processed foods),
This is delicious as a dip (though I did add a greater ratio of the spice mixture to the sour cream than indicated to up the flavor). Also was really delicious added to mashed potatoes!
I am looking for your homemade onion dip recipe. I know I’ve seen you share it, but am having trouble finding it on your site.
Hi Robin. It will be in the cookbook: https://www.100daysofrealfood.com/buythecookbook. :) ~Amy
Wow! This was such a great find!! I added about a 1/4 tsp of sea salt and 1/2 tsp of dried minced onion, and this hit the spot!! Thank you VERY MUCH!! =^)
I actually meant without mayo. Earlier comments refer to original post for dressing (rather than dip), but the original recipe on other site uses mayo. If I wanted to turn this dip into a dressing, would adding milk (to make it more liquidy) do the trick?
Hi again, Jess. We have not tried but I think that adding a bit of milk would certainly get you to the right consistency. ~Amy
How would you turn this into a dressing without using mayo? Just add whole milk??
Hi Jess. Do you mean without sour cream? You could try using yogurt. ~Amy
Just what I was looking for! I subbed greek yogurt and was very pleased with the results. Will be making this regularly!
Just made this and loved it. Thanks.
I recently fixed this for a party. It was my first time trying a homemade ranch dip, and I would say it turned out so-so. My husband & I did eat it w/ some veggies, but our family (who isn’t used to more natural foods) didn’t like it. To us, it didn’t seem to have a very strong “ranch” flavor that we expected. The taste was palatable but not sure I would expect to pass it as ranch dip. We will keep trying though; usually are very pleased with the recipes from this site :)
I have to say, I was very excited to see this! We have begun to eat a much healthier diet and it has been hard to find a ranch dressing or dip that meets my standards for flavor. I cannot wait to try making this. It will be perfect for our New Years Eve party. Thanks for sharing :-)
I (and my guests) found this dip to be a bit crunchy with all of the dried parsley. May be okay if use fresh parsley. Would also recommend reducing the amount of garlic powder.
I love this idea and can’t wait to try it, but I just happened to look at the ingredient list on my sour cream and for the first time noticed that it has 10 different ingredients in it. Is there any sour cream out there has less than 5 ingredients without a bunch of stuff I can’t pronounce?
I use Daisy brand. One ingredient: Grade A cultured cream
I was surprised and disappointed to see that, too! Meijer brand sour cream is out! Daisy Sour Cream is just made with cream. Sometimes it is a dollar more expensive, but I think it is worth it.
You can make your own sour cream. I make mine out of cream (not ultra pasteurized).I got my cultures form cultures from health.
As is long time lover of ranch party dip, I have to say this recipe is as close as I have found to the real deal. Yeah, it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn close. I made it exactly as written, and after a first taste test I decided it needed a little sea salt. Other than that, I didn’t mess with it. Thanks for helping me to get off the “chemical powders in an envelope”!
Meant to give it 5 stars! Oops!
This is probably a dumb question, but I have a recipe that for ranch dressing mix that uses dry buttermilk powder. Is there anything wrong with that?
Hi Laura. Powdered milks are not an ingredient Lisa uses both because it is more processed, but also because powdered milks contain oxidized cholesterol which is not a form of cholesterol that is food for your heart. ~Amy
Yay! I would love to have Ranch Dressing ready to go, Think that we could do half butter milk/half sour cream? iIts what we do when using Hidden Valley’s (ahhhhhhh) Ranch. That stuff makes my heat race so badly!!!
Hi Maria. We have not tried. Let us know if you do and how it turns out. ~Amy
The spices would be good as long as they would have been in their original container….just look at your soonest expiration date and mark your calendar with that…..when you make the dip or dressing, it will expire whenever your dairy product would have expired.
How long can you keep this mixture of spices befor it goes bad?
Hi Mary. Are you asking about the mixture before it is mixed in to the sour cream? If so, if you keep it in a airtight container, it would keep like any other spice blend. Keeping it in the fridge would prolong its life, too. Once you have mixed it with the dairy, it would keep only as long a the sour cream. ~Amy
Thank you for posting this! We’ve made a committment to cut out MSG and ranch dip/dressing has been a tough one to find without it.
I am wondering if anyone has done this with yogurt instead of sour cream? we have a dairy allergy in the family, but if yogurt would work i could mix it with so coconut yogurt.
I use yogurt all the time instead of sour cream. Can’t tell a difference at all.
I can’t wait to try this! We don’t use sour cream anymore, instead we use plain yogurt and you cannot tell a difference! I’m sure it’d work perfectly with this!!
missing one key ingredient, powdered buttermilk
After reading the comments I was nervous to try this. My daughter wanted to take it with her to school tomorrow so we whipped some up real fast and tried it out. I used 1/2 t of dill since many replies said 1 t was too much. She liked it. I didn’t think it had enough flavor, and ended up adding more season mix. Maybe i’m just used to “real” ranch. We’ll continue to play around with it until we get the right flavor.
:)
I made some ranch dip last week (didn’t use this recipe, just haphazardly added things to sour cream) – just saw this post refresh on FB – and thought I’d see what the official recipe is! My only thing is that I would probably add a little salt. This is good, now I have something to actually measure!
I made this today using full fat sour cream and thought it was delicious! I only added a few sprinkles of freshly ground pepper rather than a full 1/2 tsp. Thank you for another awesome recipe and for all that you do and share! :)
I thought this was delicious, and my kids will definitely love it! It DOES need a bit of salt though. I may try it with a tiny bit of fresh garlic mashed w/ a bit of salt next time. There is NOTHING better than fresh garlic!
Thanks
Loved this. My daughter can make it on her own. Added bonus that there are no artificial ingredients that we cannot pronounce!
(*I did add salt but my daughter didn’t think it needed it.)
Made this today, but truly I am bad at following recipes…and when I do they don’t usually turn out, so I made my recipe as follows: 1/2 tsp dill, 1/2 tsp basil, salt, pepper, 1 tsp Afro Fusion brand – Mama Cita all purpose seasoning, maybe 1/2-1tsp honey, 1/2-1tsp mustard and 1/4-1/2 cup yogurt. My 4-1/2 year old and I liked it, but then again we don’t eat fake ranch dressing so there isn’t a comparison. When it comes to making veggie dip for parties I always make some kind of mix like this, using yogurt and/or sour cream and different seasonings. True ranch dip seems sweeter to me and definitely would not have that much dill. I like a good organic all-purpose seasoning to add in place of most of the spices.
I LOVE this recipe! The ratio of seasoning is perfect in my opinion. I can’t get enough of veggies dipped into this. The only thing I think it needs is a little salt to bring out all the flavors.
Also try mixing this with greek yogurt. Very good!
Every other recipe I’ve tried from this site has been really good. I was disappointed with this one though. Too much dill, too much pepper and just not very palatable.
I experimented and tried the seasoning with nonfat greek yogurt, olive oil mayo and then sour cream. The Greek yogurt with seasonings was not bad but still needed work. The olive oil mayo was just weird (and I didn’t feel good about eating it either). The full-fat sour cream won in my book. But, I will have to say it isn’t exactly like Ranch. Hopefully my kids will accept it though!
We’re using this mix of spices as a dry rub for crock pot buffalo chicken lettuce wraps. I’m hopeful that it’ll come out tasty!!
YUM! I just made this (didn’t have any onion powder) and it is delicous! Thanks for the recipe.
My kids absolutely ADORE this recipe. I cut back on the pepper a lot and we use greek yoghurt. We have done it with finely sliced green onion instead of the onion powder, and fresh parsley too. I love that if you have any of the fresh ingredients you can just use them instead. 1tbsp fresh for 1tsp dried.
Also note – if you want a true ranch flavour you do need to use the dreaded fake mayo. I admit – it is the best for this recipe from a non-real stand point. But seeing as how that completely defeats the purpose – Greek Yogurt it is for us!
I really like you , your recipes, and your blog, so I hate to leave a bad review, but I want to warn others before they waste ingredients on this. I thought this turned out pretty gross. It vaguely tastes like ranch, but has a very strong dill taste, not much other flavor, and just tastes off. It is also too spicy– too much pepper for sure!
I added 1 t lemon juice, a dash more of garlic powder and onion powder, 1 1/2 t Real Salt, and used Greek yogurt (the additions were added AFTER following the recipe to make it palatable) Tried the addition of honey as suggested in the comments and didn’t notice a difference. Just a warning that this does NOT taste like ranch dip and I don’t think I like whatever it does taste like!
My husband claims that I’m trying to kill him with the healthy food I’ve been serving recently (the man loves his chips), but then he proceeded to tuck into a platter of veggies with a small side of this ranch dressing. He LOVED it and I had everything on hand. It could not have been easier. Thanks very much.
Hi, we made this tonight and for my kids I mixed 1 tbsp to about 1.5-2 cups of sour cream They thought when it was with one cup that it was too ‘spicy’ once I added more sour cream they gobbled it up they love dressing with our homemade potato chips and broccoli and carrots.
VERY good! I’m a ranch girl and actually liked this BETTER!