Dairy Free Ranch Salad Dressing Recipe
We eat a lot of salads and I’ve just recently decided I need to make my own salad dressings. One because so many of them contain dairy, which my family can’t eat. Two, because they seem to be so expensive and have all these weird ingredients in them.
I decided to start with a recipe for ranch dressing. This is one dressing that we can’t find dairy free, so making it at home is the only option. I already make a ranch type dip for chips and vegetables sticks. Making that recipe into a ranch type dressing I thought wouldn’t be too hard.
I searched Pinterest for a few recipes to see if the seasonings were similar to what I use in my dip recipe and in general they were. I did find the addition of paprika to a few recipes so I added that to my ranch dressing, to see if we would like it.
No Sour Cream, No Problem
Many of the recipes I found online used sour cream in them. I have a substitute for sour cream, we use Tofutti Sour Cream that’s dairy free. I get it from Azure Standard. But since I don’t order often from them I can’t be certain I’ll have it on hand. Plus the retailers in our area that used to carry it, no longer do.
Instead of sour cream in my ranch dressing, I use sour milk. To make sour milk you add a half a tablespoon of vinegar to the half cup of diary free milk. It curdles it just a little, thickening it up. And giving the sourish taste, like sour cream. It’s not perfect but does work well in the recipe.
Making the Dressing
I like to mix the herbs and spices into the mayo before adding the soured milk. It really helps to distribute the seasonings well and makes it so much easier to mix in. I usually use grated fresh garlic in this recipe but dried garlic will also work well, if that’s what you have on hand.
I like to use a whisk to mix the dressing, but if you have a food processor or a stick blender. Either would work well too. I find the whisk is quick, easy and less clean up.
Dairy Free Ranch Salad Dressing
Ingredients
- 1 cup Mayonnaise
- 3/4 cup Dairy Free Milk
- 1 tablespoon Vinegar
- 1 teaspoon Dried Chives
- 1 teaspoon Dried Parsley
- 1 teaspoon Dried Garlic or 1 Clove Garlic Finely Minced
- 1/2 teaspoon Paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon Onion Powder
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt
- 1/4 teaspoon Pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon Dill Weed
Instructions
- Mix the dairy free milk and vinegar. Set aside to thicken.
- In a large bowl, mix mayonnaise and seasonings.
- Add the milk mixture to the mayonnaise mixture and whisk until all the lumps are gone.
- Store in a clean jar in the refrigerator.
If you don’t have to eat dairy free you can use 1 cup of sour cream or yogurt in place of the milk and vinegar mixture. Then add enough milk to get the consistency that you prefer. If you have dairy free yogurt or sour cream on hand those would work too.
What’s your favorite type of dressing? Do you have a good recipe for it?
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Thanks for sharing this recipe, Shelly! I agree that a lot of salad dressings have weird ingredients in them.
I’ve never tried making my own dressings, but I do enjoy ranch, blue cheese, and berry vinaigrettes. Sadly, no one else in my family likes salad dressing. My husband prefers only lime or lemon on his salad…he learned that from his family growing up. Lol
I’m like you, I like salad dressing on my salad. I have eaten salad with just salt and pepper and it was ok. I like salt, pepper, vinegar and olive oil on the salad as a dressing. But my kids and husband really like to have salad dressing on their salads. I’m hoping to come up with more recipes for salad dressings over the summer. Since we are going to have lots of lettuce from the garden.
This looks so good! I just said at dinner that I wanted to start making our own dressing. Thanks for sharing your recipe 🙂