What is better than a good ranch dressing? Its creamy and tangy flavor can turn even the most boring snack or salad into pure indulgence, and while store-bought ranch is never as good as a restaurant’s, it still hits the spot when you’re in a bind. Well, usually. It turns out, though, that not every bottle from the store lives up to expectations, as Chowhound discovered when we set out to find the best and worst store-bought ranch you can buy.
Coming in last place was Primal Kitchen’s Ranch Dressing with Avocado Oil. It all sounds great when you read the bottle, full of clean ingredients, with no dairy and using cage-free eggs alongside an avocado oil base. However, the taste just doesn’t work. In fact, its funky and odd flavor bears very little resemblance to ranch at all. Ranch dressing should have that familiar taste of garlic, herbs, and tangy buttermilk (or a convincing substitute) that we all love, but instead, this bottle offered a strange taste that our reviewer claimed they wouldn’t want to dip a single thing into. And at $6.99, it was the priciest bottle on the list, which is a steep price to pay for disappointment. This definitely revealed something to bear in mind: The price of a bottle doesn’t always equal quality.
Why Primal Kitchen ranch stood out (and not in a good way)
Most of the dressings we tested followed familiar patterns in what made them stand out. The ones at the top of the list managed to balance acidity and creaminess with just the right amount of herbs present while the more mid-tier bottles were perhaps a bit bland but not awful, although a few leaned too sweet or too artificial tasting. But Primal Kitchen’s ranch broke from the pack entirely in all the wrong ways.
At first glance, the ingredients list looked promising: apple cider vinegar, egg yolks, dill, black pepper, and rosemary. Delicious in theory, it sounds like a fresh and savory dressing that would also be healthy, which is never a bad thing. But on tasting, something was … off. Literally. One review online went as far to say they thought their bottle might be compromised, but our reviewer at Chowhound was convinced that was in fact just the flavor. “Rancid.” Yikes.
We admit that sometimes you may need to spice up your store-bought ranch and improve it, but at the end of the day, a good ranch should have a solid basis that makes you want to dip everything in sight into it, from veggies to pizza. It is meant to enhance everything. But sadly, upon tasting Primal Kitchen’s version, no one would be reaching for a second dip.
