Making Homemade Ranch Salad Dressing

With four different types of lettuce growing in the garden, we're about to start enjoying fresh salads each and every night with accompanying peppers and radishes.  In anticipation of fresh salads, Tricia set her mind to making some Ranch Salad dressing "from scratch."  Making something from scratch is an odd phrase.  I did some quick looking on the Internet and found it has British roots and means made from nothing, or in a food context, made without any pre-mixed or specially processed ingredients.

Rather than start with packets of seasoning, Tricia sliced up some onions and garlic and put them on the food dehydrator.


Garlic & Onions

She placed the sliced onion and garlic on the dehydrator and left them on it for a day or so until they were totally dry.  She then popped them in the food processor and chopped them both up together until they were pulverized into onion/garlic powder.  The scent was intense - bursting with aromatic flavor.  She poured the powder into a salt shaker.  


Onions and Garlic ready to dry

To a half pint or so of heavy cream from Daisy, she added an ice cube of frozen kefir.  This kefir was explained in a previous post.  Once you add one ice cube of kefir to the cream, you let it sit for 18 hours at room temperature.  This makes creme fraiche.  Creme Fraiche means fresh cream in French, but is actually a high quality of sour cream that is less sour - and delicious.


Adding kefir (the culture) to start souring the cream

Once your creme fraiche is done, you can make up your homemade ranch salad dressing.  Here's how you do it:

To one cup creme fraiche, add:

• 1 teaspoon of garlic/onion powder mix that Tricia just made
• 1/2 teaspoon (or less) of salt
• 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley (we had this frozen from the crop this Spring)
• 1/4 teaspoon of dried dill weed

For a dip to dip celery, carrots, broccoli in, leave it thick.  Add a little milk to thin it for a dressing.

 

All the ingredients of a delicious ranch salad dressing

Once you add all those ingredients, stir it up real good.  Now all that's left to do is pick some fresh lettuce and pour some of this deliciousness on top of it!  We'll harvest some tomorrow.  Stay tuned. 

  

Our Maker's Acres Ranch Dressing