Introduced by Steve Henson around 1950, ranch started as a riff on a more classic buttermilk dressing with a mixture of dried herbs and spices that would become Henson’s signature recipe. He was working a construction job in Anchorage at the time, and fresh ingredients were not widely available. In 1954, Henson and his wife, Gayle, bought a ranch in Santa Barbara County, Calif., and named it Hidden Valley. Soon, packing and shipping ranch seasoning packets became their family business. “The dressing pretty much took over the ranch,” Nolan Henson, their son, told the New York Times in 2018.

Source: Washington Post August 10, 2021 14:01 UTC