When someone mentions the word “ranch” my mind instantly thinks of Hidden Valley Ranch. The flavor of Hidden Valley Ranch is heaven on a carrot stick. I mean, how else would we eat our vegetables? Hidden Valley was the only kind I would buy for years because nothing else tasted the same.
So I wanted to create the mix for myself to save money (those packets are expensive…) and to eat more healthy. Hidden Valley ranch has lots of processed ingredients including MSG and I wanted a more natural recipe. After toiling for many days and force feeding experiment ranch to my husband, I was finally able to re-create the homemade Hidden Valley Ranch mix and am sharing that recipe with you today.
That’s right I said it, the Hidden Valley is Hidden no more. Go ahead. I will wait while you do your happy dance.
I had to solve the problem of the MSG. From looking at the ingredients I noticed there was MSG in the dressing – which is a huge flavor additive. One thing I knew for certain…I did NOT want to have MSG or other nasty chemical or processed items in this recipe. I’m trying to use real foods and make more things from scratch. I tried using spices and buttermilk powder but it never came out quite right. It also seemed every time I tried just adding more salt or spices, it just wasn’t the same. The depth of flavor wasn’t there.
I even called up my sister as a last resort (who is known for her copycat recipe abilities) and she said she gave up on making a copycat homemade hidden valley ranch mix a long time ago. So with great despair I almost gave up. I googled for replacements for MSG and it said there was nothing that works. Some folks mentioned random things like tomatoes, sugar, fish oil, and Mrs. Dash. Mushrooms were also mentioned in passing as something that can add a lot of depth of flavor, so I thought I would try the recipe one more time with dried mushrooms.
Hallelujah. It turned out those dried mushrooms were the secret ingredient that made this work!! And I don’t even like mushrooms. But in this recipe it is delicious and the flavor I needed.
When I perfected the recipe I compared them side by side; the homemade hidden valley ranch mix and the original mixed with sour cream. The flavors were almost exactly the same. I will say that both are pretty salty, so if you want less salt feel free not to add as much. But to get the real exact flavor you need lots of salt.
And now without further ado..here is the recipe for homemade Hidden Valley Ranch mix. May you have much joy, eat more real foods and possibly save money too while making this!
Homemade Hidden Valley Ranch Mix
1/2 cup dry buttermilk powder
1 tablespoon dried parsley, divided
1 teaspoon dried dill weed, 1/2 teaspoon reserved (I used Litehouse freeze dried dill)
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon dried onion flakes (or dried chopped onion)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons pieces organic portabella dried mushrooms
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Directions:
Add all the dry ingredients except the reserved teaspoon of dried parsley and the 1/2 teaspoon of dried dill to your blender. Blend until a nice powder.
Hand mix in the reserved parsley and dill – you want to see some herbs in your mix.
Store dry mix in an air-tight container or jar in your pantry for 2-3 months or in the freezer for 6 months or longer.
To make Hidden Valley Ranch Dip:
Mix 2 tablespoons of dry mix with 1/2 – 1 cup of Sour Cream. Chill for 2 hours and serve as a dip. If for some reason your sour cream isn’t very thick, and you want your dip to really set up thickly add in 1/2 teaspoon of unflavored gelatin.
To make Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing for salads n such.
Mix together
3 Tablespoons Dry Ranch Dip mix
1 cup of mayonnaise
2/3 cup buttermilk
Mix together and let sit in the fridge for 1-2 hours (gotta let those flavors deepen). Just to let you know I tried this recipe with regular milk instead of the buttermilk first and it was NOT great tasting. But using the buttermilk it tasted just like the real deal. So keep that in mind…real buttermilk is the key to the dressing.
Other ideas to use your dry ranch mix
After spreading butter on a 1/2 of a loaf of french bread, sprinkle some dry ranch powder on and bake it for a delicious ranch-y style of garlic bread.
Sprinkle some of this mix over your roasting potatoes as a seasoning.
Use 2 tablespoons of dry mix in any recipe asking for dry ranch mix.
DIY Copycat Homemade Hidden Valley Ranch Mix
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup dry buttermilk powder
- 1 tbsp dried parsley for blending, divided
- 1 tsp dried dill weed, divided
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp dried onion flakes or dried chopped onion
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tbsp pieces organic portabella dried mushrooms
- 1 tsp garlic salt
- 1/4 tsp ground pepper
- 1/2 tsp sugar
Instructions
- Add all the dry ingredients except the reserved 1 tsp of dried parsley and the 1/2 teaspoon of dried dill to your blender. Blend until a nice powder.
- Hand mix in the reserved parsley and dill - you want to see some herbs in your mix.
- Store dry mix in an air-tight container or jar in your pantry for 2-3 months or in the freezer for 6 months or longer.
Notes
Mix 2 tablespoons of dry mix with 1/2 - 1 cup of Sour Cream. Chill for 2 hours and serve as a dip. If for some reason your sour cream isn't very thick, and you want your dip to really set up thickly add in 1/2 teaspoon of unflavored gelatin. To make Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing for salads and such:
Mix together
3 Tablespoons Dry Ranch Dip mix
1 cup of mayonaise
2/3 cup buttermilk Mix together and let sit in the fridge for 1-2 hours (gotta let those flavors deepen). Just to let you know I tried this recipe with regular milk instead of the buttermilk first and it was NOT great tasting. But using the buttermilk it tasted just like the real deal. So keep that in mind...real buttermilk is the key to the dressing. Other ideas to use your dry ranch mix After spreading butter on a 1/2 of a loaf of french bread, sprinkle some dry ranch powder on and bake it for a delicious ranch-y style of garlic bread.
Sprinkle some of this mix over your roasting potatoes as a seasoning. Use 2 tablespoons of dry mix in any recipe asking for dry ranch mix. NOTE: This recipe makes about 6 Hidden-Valley-Ranch packet sizes worth of dry powder. Each individual pack serves 36 (about 1/4 tsp of mix per person).
Nutrition
Loved this recipe?
Make sure to follow on Instagram @happymoneysaver and on Pinterest @happymoneysaver for more money savin' recipes!
Please come back after you try this and let me know what you think.
About Karrie
Food is my love language. But so is saving money. So I like to combine the two a lot and make thrifty make ahead and freeze meals to save time. Because life is busy, and freezer meals can come to the rescue for all of us. And yes, they actually CAN taste good. Read more...
Comments & Reviews
Nicole says
This recipe is incredible and NO MSG!!!!! Finally!! It actually tastes better than the packets you buy 🙂 Thank you so much!
Lisa says
Mushrooms have naturally occurring MSG. 🙁
Dave Bollman says
I was wondering what the difference is between your recipe and hidden valley ranch buttermilk version. I notice in the store that the buttermilk version the packets are smaller than the dip packets. I would like to make this for salads so if you call for adding 2/3C buttermilk do I need to add dry buttermilk in the dry mix?
Pjrsmom says
I just purchased all the ingredients to make this. However, I just noticed that my mushroom package states that the mushrooms must be cooked. Is this something everyone has encountered, or are mine the wrong type?
Caity Sue says
This was addressed earlier in the discussion – go back towards the beginning of the comments and you will see where someone answered that question.
Lauren says
I am not able to find the answer to this quests. Mine say do not use raw also? Did you use?
Karrie says
I used them as dried mushrooms, and did not cook them.
Jen Lannon says
Absolutely, 100% NAILED IT!! 🙂
Katrina says
I simply don’t get why you need buttermilk powder if you are going to add the mix to buttermilk for the dressing anyway. Couldn’t you just adjust the amount of buttermilk or sour cream or mayonnaise to taste? When I use the actual Hidden Valley Ranch mix, I usually adjust it to taste anyway and I use the above three ingredients according to what I have available and depending on whether I want dressing or dip.
Happy.MoneySaver says
I think the buttermilk powder adds a lot of flavor especially for the dips where you don’t add any buttermilk. You could definitely try it and see if you like it better without it! 🙂
Melissa Egan says
This makes the BEST spinach dip!!! I used it in place of my usual packaged dip choice. Wonderful!! Thank you!
Happy.MoneySaver says
Great idea! I’ll try that!
diane says
So, Karrie, did you do the cost comparison? I might have missed it.
Carissa says
If you didn’t want to use buttermilk powder, could you use powdered milk instead?
Happy.MoneySaver says
It would probably change the flavor a little bit but if that doesn’t bother you then try it and see if you like it!
Pam says
I have a question regarding the measurement of dried mushroom pieces. Do you break up the pieces of dried mushrooms or bust them up to be able to measure 2 tablespoons? Hope this isn’t a dumb question but I have never used dried mushrooms before and I have tried MANY recipe variations for Hidden Valley Ranch dressing with no success. Any help would be great. Thank you.
Happy.MoneySaver says
Not a dumb question at all! I did break them into smaller pieces so I could measure them before adding them into the Vitamix with the other dry ingredients.
Unter der Laterne says
It would be helpful to know t he weight of the mushrooms! ( I have not prepared this dressing yet !
Simone says
I love this recipe! I live in Europe, and can’t ever find those packets here. I can find all the ingredients except for buttermilk powder, and I’m struggling a little bit with what to use in place. Any ideas? I could also use wet ingredients if there is no dry substitute for the buttermilk powder. Thanks!
Happy.MoneySaver says
I found this information for substitutes for buttermilk powder. Hope this helps!
Substitute 1 cup fresh buttermilk for 1/4 cup powder + 1 cup water. Or use 1 cup sour cream or for baking use 1 cup milk + 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar.
Equivalents
12 oz. can buttermilk powder = 3 3/4 cups powder, 3 3/4 quarts prepared
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/ingredients/detail/buttermilk-powder
A says
You cannot substitute powdered buttermilk but tastewise you could attempt to mimic it with yogurt powder or milk powder and lemon zest.
It would also take a lot of time and money to try to powderize liquids with powdered cellulose, food dryers, or maltodextrin.
Tara says
Sorry- I’m going to be a ‘killjoy’ here, but dried mushrooms and dried onions (not to mention dried garlic, etc) all add ‘free glutamates’ into food to make it tasty- those free glutamates combine with sodium in your food and body to create MSG…. Better to get your ‘buds’ used to food without the MSG/Umami flavor! Adding one of these adds a little, but layering these ingredients will have the same effect on someone who is sensitive to MSG.
http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2011/07/msg-salt-mushroom-seasoning.html
http://www.driedshiitakemushrooms.com/Umami-and-Mushrooms.htm
Donna says
Ha Tara! I was giggling to myself as I was reading the comments thinking EXACTLY what you posted. But for those that are sensitive to glutamates, this really is vital information to have.
Regardless, for those not sensitive to glutamates, the mushrooms definitely add a complexity (umami) that most people find lacking in “clone-type” recipes. Good post!
Kuro says
So you don’t eat any Japanese food period? My condolences if you have a legitimate food allergy, but being a lover of all foods I’d like to offer some alternatives.
Nobody here also seems to have mentioned the history behind msg. Originally it was discovered by a Japanese Scientist to help kids’ appetites by extracting the flavor of crystallized seaweed broth.
long story short, anything with Japanese broth (dashi) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashi is Jam packed with Umami http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami which really is proven be only tasted by glutamate receptors.
So anything with high levels of Umami; Soy Sauce, Cheese, Green Tea, Celery, Mushrooms, Fish, Tomatoes, etc.
Hard to believe you’re allergic to all of those things? To each their own.
I hope its just the amount of processed and prepared food that is driving up the fear of MSG. Too much of anything is bad.
Fun notes: MSG is no longer extracted by seaweed broth, and glutamates have NOTHING to do with gluten: http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/FoodAdditivesIngredients/ucm328728.htm
Also MSG got a bad rap from false reports of people associating the stuff to Chinese food in the 60’s
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001126.htm
My apologies if I just went on a history rant, I get worked up when I overhear people being ignorant or inadvertently racist at food establishments. A western-centric view of the world is not the only view of the world.
To the author: I loved the recipe! The mushrooms was a more clever (and tastier) substitution than my first go-to which would have been dried concentrated hondashi.
Amp says
Completely agree with you Kuro.
I did think it was ironic to see the dried mushrooms being added, when the point of avoiding MSG was raised, but I personally just like this recipe because it was homemade and can save money.
MSG is harmless unless you happen to have that rare “Anglo american allergy” to it. I’ve read many stories of people claiming to have a severe MSG allergy, where their face gets numb and they get headaches, only to be fed some home cooked (MSG laden) meals by friends with no symptoms whatsoever.
Its funny how most foods that are naturally rich in MSG are WIDELY considered to be quite healthy otherwise.
Rose says
People who get migraines from msg do not always get a migraine from msg every time they eat it. However, if you are a person who is sensitive to msg because it can trigger a migraine, you try to avoid as many sources of msg as possible. It’s not an allergy, it is a sensitivity. If you had ever had a migraine in your life, you would understand the necessity to avoid as many triggers as possible. I am one of those people. I never drink beer. I never eat chocolate. I eat low amounts of cheese, avoid sausages, hot dogs, and bratwurst, don’t use canned soups, etc. because when I get a migraine, I’m in so much pain, I want to die. I’m not being culturally insensitive or disingenuous about my sensitivity to foods because I sometimes eat foods that might trigger a migraine. I’m weighing the odds and taking a chance because I’m hungry, or I’m being polite at someone’s house, or I indulge once in a while because I like and miss the food. A sensitivity is NOT an allergy. It means sometimes you can eat a trigger food and it causes no problems. I hope that I have helped you understand the difference.
Vicki says
My daughter can’t have garlic. Have you ever tried it without? We love ranch, but garlic gives her migraines. I guess we’ll try it anyway. Also, do the mushrooms have to be portobello, or will just any dried kind do?
Thanks. Vicki
Happy.MoneySaver says
I haven’t made it without the garlic but give it a try and see if you like it! I think the mushrooms just add that depth of flavor so try using different ones! Let me know what you think!
Emily says
OH YUM! I have looked around for weeks at different recipes for this and now I finally found the perfect one! Mrs. Karrie, this is delicious thank you so much for the recipe. I really think the mushrooms give it that extra kick! -Emily
Cerissa says
Can’t wait to make this! I keep Porcini Mushroom powder on hand…. do you have any idea the equivalent of powder to the 2 Tbsp whole mushrooms?
Shannon says
Karrie, you are a genius! This mix is AMAZING!!! I have tried every hidden valley ranch recipe to no avail, but this one is right on the money. The mushroom is so clever, providing that umami taste that glutamates provide, only this is done naturally. I made this with homemade mayo and it better than any pre-packaged HVR dressing I have ever made. Thank you so very much!!!
Happy.MoneySaver says
So glad you like it!
Sarah says
I’ve tried at least six different ranch dressing recipes over the years since we stopped eating processed foods and I’ve always been disappointed. Nothing really tasted similar to the chemical-ridden packets and bottles I grew up enjoying.
I was very skeptical but decided to give it one more try using your recipe and it was a great success!! My kids and my husband all agreed as well. I’m so thrilled to have finally found something so tasty and free of junk.
The only change I made was using dried cremini mushrooms because I couldn’t locate portabella. It still tasted great.
Thanks so much for sharing!!
Karrie says
That is awesome!!! So happy it tasted great for you!
Karrie says
This looks awesome. I have a grandson that is crazy for ranch dressing. I have been looking for a way of making my own without all the garbage, also hoping to cut out some of the sodium, fat and calories. I’m going to make this and see if I can fool him. I’ll let you know how it goes. Thanks.
PS, I have to say, you are only the second person in my life that has spelled their name the same as me.
Happy.MoneySaver says
Yes definitely let me know how it goes, Karrie! 🙂
Leslie says
Great recipe! I found it just a little bit saltier and a little less sweet than the original (we buy the Light version of the salad dressing- maybe that’s why?) and I just left out the mushrooms and it was still great! Tasted them side by side. Next time I’ll up the sugar and decrease the salt by just a tiny bit. Thank you!
Karla says
Thank you so much for the recipe!! It turned out amazing. I just dried my own button mushrooms by first chopping them in the food processor and baking on parchment at 200 degrees until completely dry, then mixing to a powder in food processor. Worked perfectly!
Karla says
5 Stars!
Happy.MoneySaver says
Great tip! I am glad you liked the recipe!
Madison says
Love this recipe! I recently added it to cottage cheese in the blender to make a healthier, higher protein ranch dressing alternative–it was great!