There are roughly nine thousand bottled ranches in the average supermarket and most of them are interchangeable. We wanted to find out which ones aren’t. So we bought six of the most-stocked options, poured them into numbered ramekins, and tasted them with raw vegetables, room-temperature pizza crusts, and one round of buffalo wings (because of course we did).
Tasters were five adults with no particular ranch expertise, which is the right pool — ranch is a vibes condiment, and the vibes pool is everyone.
What we learned: the gap between the best and the worst is much bigger than you’d think. Hidden Valley earned its reputation. Bolthouse Farms is an unexpected story — markedly better than its yogurt-based siblings used to be. Whole Foods 365 is competent but flat. Marie’s Creamy Ranch is a strange product that we still don’t fully understand. Litehouse and Yo Mama’s both fell on their faces in interesting ways.
The full results are below.