Since we joined our CSA, it's been clear that we're going to be eating a lot of salads. The majority of the produce so far has been leafy green vegetables - and in a large variety. So if I was going to be eating a lot of salads, I needed to come up with at least one salad dressing I really loved.
I hate most every salad dressing I've ever bought. Our default salad dressing is a balsamic vinaigrette. It's really more David's thing than mine. I have more fun with it when I get a fun vinegar - like passion fruit vinegar. What I really wanted was to master creamy salad dressings.
I looked for a ranch dressing recipe on the web. A lot of them recommended using MSG to add robustness. MSG?! Doesn't it defeat the purpose of a homemade salad dressing to be throwing in chemicals?
Then I found a recipe posted on chowhound.com for a simple ranch dressing. I tried it and it was excellent. I added in a few touches from some of the other research that I did. I must say, this is one of the best dressings I've ever had. It's one of my staples now and it generally gets unsolicited compliments from guests.
Without further ado, here it is (and I sometimes halve the recipe if I'm just making it for me for the next couple of days):
1 cup mayo
1/2 cup kefir yogurt
1 or 2 cloves crushed garlic
1/2 tsp salt
2 TBsp parsley, chopped
2 TBsp chives
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 tsp white vinegar (you could use rice wine or white wine vinegar)
freshly ground pepper
salt to taste
a dash of Worcester (totally optional)
It keeps for several days in the fridge.
One commenter on chowhound commented that a real ranch recipe uses dill, to which the poster commented "So add dill." And it's true. You could add whatever herbs you had on hand to customize the recipe.