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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm your friendly neighborhood host Lauren vog Obam here with

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Speaker 1: a classic episode from our former host, Christian Sager. This

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Speaker 1: one seeks to answer a question that plagues pizza dippers

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Speaker 1: and wing eaters alike. What on earth is ranch flavor? Hey,

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Speaker 1: brain stuff, this is Christian Sager. If you have spent

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Speaker 1: time in the US or Canada, then you have heard

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Speaker 1: of ranch dressing. It was invented by a guy named

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Speaker 1: Steve Henson in the late forties to the early fifties

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Speaker 1: when he worked as a plumbing contractor in Alaska. In

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Speaker 1: the fifties, he and his wife moved near Santa Barbara,

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Speaker 1: where they opened the Hidden Valley. Dude. Ranch sounds cool, right,

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Speaker 1: Visiting guests like the ranch itself, but they loved steve

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Speaker 1: salad dressing. Eventually, the Henson's just started selling that and

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Speaker 1: the rest is history. Since ranch salad dress has been

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Speaker 1: the most popular dressing in the US. But ranch isn't

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Speaker 1: a flavor, right, Okay? People outside of the US and Canada,

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Speaker 1: thanks for bearing with me through the history lesson, but

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Speaker 1: you may have tasted ranch flavoring before. Just under a

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Speaker 1: different name. In the Netherlands. For instance, cool Ranch doritos

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Speaker 1: are called cool American doritos. That weird American flavor you

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Speaker 1: see advertised in the grocery store. That's ranch, and the

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Speaker 1: main taste in ranch is buttermilk. I know, I know,

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Speaker 1: but it's not quite that simple. Otherwise people would just

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Speaker 1: pour buttermilk on stuff, right. The original ranch recipe also

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Speaker 1: includes mayonnaise, parsley, pepper, salt, a little time, garlic, onion powder,

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Speaker 1: and msg. It's a dairy heavy recipe, which means the

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Speaker 1: original version doesn't keep very well, and that means, in turn,

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Speaker 1: the famous ranch dressing flying off shelves today is not

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Speaker 1: the same stuff that Steve was whipping up for his guests. Instead,

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Speaker 1: the result is some heady, complicated work by the eggheads

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Speaker 1: at Chlorox. Yes, that Clorox. They bought Hidden Valley in

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. They had a huge problem though. You

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Speaker 1: can't just plot bottles of buttermilk and mayo on an

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Speaker 1: unrefrigerated shelf and hope for the best, So they started

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Speaker 1: tinkering around with the recipe, practicing the arcane art of

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Speaker 1: food science. They needed something that's still pretty much tasted

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Speaker 1: like Steve's recipe, but was shelf stable, meaning it could

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Speaker 1: sit around on a truck or in a grocery store

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Speaker 1: long enough for customers to find and buy it. The

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Speaker 1: details of Clorox's work remained secret, but it is a

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Speaker 1: safe bet that Steve's original recipe didn't include things like

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Speaker 1: calcium dis soda, mine, ethel leah diah santa. I can't

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Speaker 1: even say this word. It's safe to say that he

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Speaker 1: didn't do it. By three, they had cooked up a

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Speaker 1: version of ranch that could stay on shelves for up

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Speaker 1: to one hundred and fifty days. The first four ingredients

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Speaker 1: of modern ranch dressing our vegetable oil, water, egg, yilk,

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Speaker 1: and sugar. You'll also see disodium phosphate, zanthem gum, and

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Speaker 1: the ever popular calcium disodium. Hmm. Sounds good, right, and

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Speaker 1: if you ask food reviewers like j Kenji Lopez Alt,

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Speaker 1: most shelf stable recipes end up sacrificing flavor at the

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Speaker 1: benefit of convenience. But you've probably also noticed that numerous

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Speaker 1: companies make different ranch dressings. There's the Ken Steakhouse stuff

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Speaker 1: that Paul Newman guy. The list goes on, and given

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Speaker 1: ranches popularity more competitors will enter the fray. It's inspiring

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Speaker 1: when you think about it. A multimillion dollar industry sprang

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Speaker 1: up because a guy in Alaska apparently decided he was

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Speaker 1: tired of eating mayo and buttermilk separately. Today's episode was

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Speaker 1: written by Ben Bollin and produced by Tyler Clang Brain Stuff.

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Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeart Radios Stuff Works. To hear

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Speaker 1: more about Ranch, check out an episode of my food

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Speaker 1: podcast Saver. The episode is called Ranch Dude, and Ben

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Speaker 1: guests on it, and of course, for more on this

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Speaker 1: and lots of other topics, visit our home planet, how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Plus for more podcasts from my

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows,