The Best Homemade Ranch Dressing Recipe (5 Minutes, No Mayo)

A family tested, kid-approved ranch dressing recipe made with real food ingredients that you mix up in just minutes, without mayonnaise and your choice of sour cream or yogurt. It’s a creamy, flavorful alternative to store bought versions that you can use for all your favorite pairings: veggies, salads, or as a dip. With lots of 5-star ratings, you can confidently forget about bottles and packets for this simple and delicious recipe.

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After many years of trying all kinds of recipes for homemade ranch dressing – both dry mixes and the complete dressing – and being disappointed, I finally came up with my own recipe for the best ranch dressing that our whole family likes!

I know that next to a basic vinaigrette, ranch salad dressing is probably the other bottle of dressing in most family refrigerators. And since we know how easy it is to make your own vinaigrette salad dressing (i.e., “Italian dressing”), and pretty much any dressing, I know you are going to LOVE this easy and flavorful ranch dressing recipe, too.

The Testing

When making all those other recipes I tried out, there was always something that just wasn’t “right” about them.

There was too much dill.
Or not enough garlic.
Too salty.
Or too bland.

Then I’d find a coupon for a bottle of organic ranch dressing and I’d forget about the homemade for awhile. But even on sale and with a coupon, organic dressings are not cheap. And I knew that ranch dressing is just sour cream (or mayo), buttermilk and some spices. Hardly expensive stuff.

So I went back to my recipes and combined and adapted some to come up with something that was simple, tasty, frugal (a batch costs around $1.50), and REAL.

But it wasn’t until it passed the taste test with our ranch-aholic son that I knew we had a winner. And since then it has passed the test with more family and friends as well as the many 5-star ratings in the comments!

Recipe Video

Ranch Dressing Ingredients & Notes

Items and ingredients needed:

• Sour cream: Our family preferred the taste of a sour cream based dressing vs. mayonnaise (see more on this below). I often make this with half sour cream and half plain yogurt (regular or Greek) which adds more protein but doesn’t have a full-on yogurt flavor. Some reviewers have made it with all yogurt and like the added tang, so feel free to experiment with the sour cream-yogurt ratios.
• Buttermilk: This is the classic ranch dressing ingredient (the dry mix packets have buttermilk powder), so if you can find a buttermilk without additives (usually a cultured type) that’s great. I find it hard to find so usually use the “faux buttermilk” mixture of regular milk with vinegar (for this recipe, a 1/2 cup milk mixed with 1-1/2 teaspoon vinegar).
• Lemon juice: Either fresh or bottled is fine for this classic salad dressing ingredient that really brightens the flavor. Some people have suggested just using this with regular milk to recreate the buttermilk and not add the vinegar at all – it could work, though I haven’t tried it.
• Fresh garlic: While I prefer the flavor of fresh garlic in the dressing, you can use 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder if you’d like.
• Dried parsley: This is the main herb in ranch dressing.
• Onion powder: I always use granulated onion instead of powder as I feel it measures better and has more flavor.
• Sea salt: You can use any salt you have. Start with the measurements, but taste after it’s mixed and see if you’d like more.
• Black pepper: I usually use coarse ground pepper – if you use fine ground, start with less than the 1/2 teaspoon and taste to adjust.
• Dried dill or fresh: The second herb in ranch dressing, a little goes a long way with dill. Adjust the amount if you’d like more or less.

Buttermilk Note

A note on buttermilk: A few years ago I realized that, for the most part, what they sell in the stores as “buttermilk” is not true buttermilk (which is the milk extracted during the process of making butter), but a milk with thickeners and often preservatives added to it. It’s sometimes cultured, but traditional buttermilk wasn’t always cultured. Since I’d like to avoid additives and I don’t have access to real buttermilk, I always make the “faux buttermilk” I mentioned above.

Sour Cream Note

Check the label of your sour cream!

If you don’t make your own, you’ll want to find a sour cream that contains only cream like the one listed above (which is Daisy brand). Compare this with the ingredients on most of the other store brands which list at least 10 ingredients including fillers, preservatives, and thickeners.

Why no mayonnaise?

Some ranch recipes call for mayonnaise instead of sour cream. We like sour cream for a couple of reasons:

• It creates a thicker dressing that works for a dip
• Or with just a little thinning with milk it can coat lettuce for a dressing
• Our family likes the flavor better.
• And it seems a bit ‘lighter’ than oil-heavy mayo.
• Bonus: it makes the dressing egg-free for those avoiding eggs.

Plus, since I make my own mayonnaise, we pretty much save it for sandwiches and caesar salad dressing since mayo is a must for that dressing.

A few tools that are great for homemade salad dressings

• Glass tablespoon measuring cup (SO much easier than spoons for liquids!)
• Pint glass jar with zinc lid
• Salad dressing style bottle with flip-top lid

How to Make Ranch Dressing

TIP: Don’t be tempted to skip the lemon juice- I really think it makes it so much fresher tasting. The lemon might seem a bit strong at first, but after the dressing has sits overnight the flavors mingle and it’s no longer as dominate.

And that’s it! Seems silly that I’d ever take the time to buy this when it takes like, 5 minutes, right?

Storage

How long does the ranch dressing keep?

We’ve never had it go bad, but I’ll stay on the safe side and say 3 weeks to a month in the fridge. Since it’s homemade with no stabilizers, it will thin a bit as it sits, but you can add a bit more sour cream or yogurt and maybe a bit more salt, whisk it in and it’s good to go.

I hope you give this ranch dressing recipe a try, too, and let me know what you think by leaving a rating and review!

More Favorite Homemade Dressings

• Homemade Honey Mustard Dressing
• Basic Vinaigrette Salad Dressing 4 Ways
• Mason Jar Ranch Salad Dressing Dry Mix (my recipe made into a mix with directions!)

This recipe has been updated in 2018 and 2025 – it was originally published in 2011.

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