Temptation of the Week: Ranch dressing instead of ketchup

Even if you don't like to eat in bars, you have to love the box of condiments you often see in bars. Ketchup, mustard, and hot sauce dominate those boxes. Hidden Valley wants you to add another bottle to the box: ranch dressing.

The company has come out with what it says is pourable ranch dressing with the idea that you would dip your French fries, onion rings, and mozzarella sticks in ranch dressing.

Ranch dressing went from obscurity to dominance in the salad dressing field. Way too often in my life, I have been at a restaurant where I could get ranch but not blue cheese dressing.

Full disclosure: I hate ranch dressing. I find it extremely boring. I like buttermilk. Okay, I love buttermilk. Too often, buttermilk ranch dressing has very little buttermilk. I like buttermilk dressing with a lot of buttermilk. But that isn't ranch dressing.

My favorite Buffalo wings place in the whole world only serves ranch dressing. I end up getting the wings to go or sneaking in blue cheese dressing.

So the idea of adding more ranch dressing to restaurant tables is depressing enough. But as sales and preferences go, I'm in the minority.

My ideal condiments box would be ketchup (without high-fructose corn syrup), mustard (yellow and brown), malt vinegar, Miracle Whip (until Kraft brought back the high-fructose corn syrup version), and hot sauce (red and green).

The two things Americans love are dips and things to dip. Condiments are supposed to enhance the flavor, what you see often in Canada and England where vinegars are lightly sprinkled on fries. A fresh aioli could be served but isn't likely to be sitting out in a condiments box. Unfortunately, you often see patrons drown their food in their condiment of choice.

The condiment manufacturers, like most food manufacturers, want you to use as much of their product as possible and then buy more. That is their desire. Your desire should be to enhance the flavor of whatever you are eating, but still be able to tell the difference between what you are eating and the condiment in question.

photo by me

Comments

[Justine]

I never knew we have this one. I often buy ketchup. For a change i'm going to try this. Looks delish.

[Norman]

This is a good one. Bookmarked. Will check out more. I'll try this out.