Really Easy Home-made Ranch Dressing/Dipping Sauce

I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but I like ranch dressing.

There was a time when I had not even SEEN, much less tasted ranch dressing for 15-20 years. As far as I was concerned, it was '70's and very, very passe. A waste of my time and palate.

In the late 90's, say 1997 or so, I was the Executive Chef of the Canterbury Hotel in San Francisco. It was the holiday season and a doctor was throwing a party in some of our event space. He asked our director of catering for ranch dressing as his party was starting and she came to me.

She evidently thought that I must have a jug of it around somewhere, when I said no, she started to panic. Seems she had already told him that we had it.

I told her I had not had any since I was a child and did not know what it tasted like, but I said "You know what it tastes like, right? Let's make some."

Long story short, with her as my taster, we had some in about 5-10 minutes.

I thought, well that is the last time I'll have to deal with that tired old crap.

Four years later I move to Portland Oregon, and become the Executive Chef at Edgefield (a cool hotel owned by an equally cool company) and quickly realized that Ranch Dressing is Haute Cuisine in PDX!

Evidently it is to be served with nearly EVERYTHING! Including pizza!?!

I am horrified.

This continued for about 6 more years and I started to come around. While I do not think it belongs on everything, it has it's places. Mostly salads with bacon and my son's chicken strips.

After trying many commercially produced versions, I set out to create my own. Not surprising really, I do this a lot.

None of the cookbooks that I own have a recipe, so it was off to the internet. I read about 40 recipes, selected three, tried one and altered it. I think that the results were pretty good, but I failed the ultimate test, my son and his chicken strips. He said it tasted really good, but there were too many vegetables in it!

To say my son doesn't like vegetables would be one of the greatest understatements of all time. But that is another story.

Here is my recipe:

1 C Buttermilk

1 C Mayonnaise

1 tsp Lemon Juice

1/8 tsp Paprika

1/4 tsp Mustard Powder

1/2 tsp Kosher Salt

1/4 tsp Black Pepper

1 T Flat Leaf Parsley (finely chopped)

1 tsp Chives (finely Chopped)

1/4 tsp dry Thyme (1 tsp if fresh)