Yeah, that Clorox! Clorox told HuffPost that Hidden Valley Ranch employs more than five food scientists, along with more than 10 packaging scientists, process engineers and product developers.
So how does one get into the ranch development business? It helps to be a supertaster. Edith Neta, the associate research fellow of product development, who has a masters and a Ph. I have , to a million. That means visiting their on-site herb garden or making a ton of food that seemingly has nothing to do with ranch, like homemade pasta and sauce for a deep dive into Italian cuisine.
They also eat out in restaurants to study menus, travel to conferences about food and listen to what consumers want. Once the team is properly inspired, a prototype is developed in the kitchen. An in-house panel of tasters trained to taste ranch their job is literally to eat ranch!
Why do people love ranch? You can drizzle it on pizza, dip carrots into it, use it in cakes and baked goods, sprinkle it onto popcorn. Ranch has even adorned Crocs and Halloween costumes. Ketchup is very specific, the tomato flavor, hot sauce is spicy, ranch is cooling so it can go with spicy food. Ranch was not always a refrigerator staple.
Not much is known about the enigmatic figure. At 35, Henson retired. He and his high school sweetheart, Gayle, then moved on to California. It remains a mystery how Henson devised his ranch dressing recipe. Clorox, which now owns Hidden Valley Ranch the dressing , believes he perfected what may be a family recipe while working in Alaska. As for the most popular non-salad food to enjoy ranch with — well, that would be fries and chips, of course.
In a way, it's amazing that ranch dressing even took off in the first place. Steve Henson's mail order seasoning packet business relied on Americans having buttermilk and mayonnaise in the fridge ready to go. The convenience factor was somewhat lacking. By the s, Clorox had at least figured out how to add the buttermilk flavor to the seasoning packet so that regular milk and mayonnaise were all that was required make the dressing. Hidden Valley Ranch introduced the first shelf-stable, bottled ranch dressing in , and that's when ranch dressing really became an American food phenom.
How did the food scientists at Clorox make ranch dressing shelf stable? Looking at Steve Henson's original recipe, it is caloric, delicious, and perishable. There was no way to sell large batches of a dressing made from buttermilk, mayonnaise, and some herbs and spices. The Hidden Valley Ranch dressing that comes from a bottle is a canola oil and soy-based product, with a lot of hard to pronounce ingredients such as "disodium inosinate" and "calcium disodium.
In , Hidden Valley Ranch released a five liter keg of ranch equivalent to seven regular bottles of ranch dressing , because why have a bottle in your fridge when you can have a keg of the stuff? Not surprisingly, it was more ranch than most people need or should consume. The nutrition label on a bottle of Hidden Valley Ranch lists the serving size as two tablespoons, and the keg contains servings. Hidden Valley Ranch contains relatively high levels of sodium and saturated fats that, if eaten in moderation, are pretty innocuous, but, according to nutrition expert Sarah Krieger , "In a 5-liter keg, there are servings of 2 tablespoons, so the consumer is in charge of how much to enjoy, but should be aware of how quickly it adds up.
Hidden Valley Ranch has had seen quite the growth since its Buttermilk Original seasoning packet days. They sell a "secret sauce" that comes in a squirt bottle in three flavors: spicy, smokehouse, and original ranch. They sell dips, and they sell blasted creamy dipping sauces that come in squirt bottles. They sell pasta salads, breading prep kits, and dip cups.
When it comes to ranch dressing, Hidden Valley sells the Original Ranch, of course, but they also sell Original Homestyle , which according to the reviews, may or may not taste different from the original. They also sell Simply Ranch, a line of ranch dressings that claim to have no artificial flavors, preservatives, or colors. For those seeking lighter fare but who still want to get their ranch on, Hidden Valley sells Greek yogurt-based ranch as well as a line of light, fat-free, and organic dressings.
They sell too many flavors to list, from millennial-friendly flavors like avocado ranch and Sriracha ranch to the old school classics like cheddar bacon ranch and Buffalo ranch. However, not every product has been a success. Back when ranch dressing was sold as flavor dry mixes, Hidden Valley had trouble with bacon bits poking holes in the packaging of the Ranch with Bacon flavor. Should Costco members and non-Costco members alike be able to wheel gallon jugs of ranch dressing to their cars?
Woodman's Food Market, a regional grocery chain based in the Midwest, certainly thinks so. The grocery chain sued Clorox in Federal Court for declining to sell twin packs of ounce bottles of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing to Woodman's, forcing the chain to buy single 32 and ounce bottles instead.
Woodman's alleged that the lack of large containers of ranch dressing would cause them to lose customers to Costco and Sam's Club , and that Clorox may have engaged in illegal price discrimination.
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