NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
May 25, 2000
Ranch salad dressing is like air: it's good with everything that's not a dessert (I like my confections dense).
I was still in my teens when I first tasted original ranch dressing, that tangy blend of herbs and spices made creamy-yet-fluid with the addition of mayonnaise and buttermilk. Since my first introduction, I've eaten ranch dressing on leafy greens, of course, but also on baked potatoes, on hash brown potatoes, on roast beef (with some horseradish mixed in), on pork chops, on hamburgers, on seafood (baked and deep-fried), on tacos, in potato salad, in egg salad, in ham salad, as a dip for boiled shrimp, for potato chips, for corn chips, for snack crackers, for french fries, drizzled over grilled steak, over hot pieces of cornbread, over steamed asparagus, over green beans (with some crumbled bacon mixed in), over cucumbers and onions, over hominy, and yes, even over Spanish rice ...
Which reminds me: I was eating at a buffet-style Mexican restaurant once and discovered, as I was lunging for the ladle sticking out of ranch dressing container, that it was empty. A waiter scurrying by said they'd run out of ranch dressing. Someone standing next to me in the buffet line said, "That's like a bar running out of beer."
I never went back. Eventually, that restaurant quit offering a luncheon buffet. I'm convinced the ranch dressing mishap was involved in both decisions.
Next to running out of mayonnaise or ketchup, I can't envision a worse condiment calamity at home than being a ladle or two short of ranch dressing. The recipe that follows is easy to make, low in calories and substitutes quite nicely for the original.
Creamy Ranch Salad Dressing
From SOARthe Searchable Online Archive of Recipes, University of California, Berkeley (http://soar.Berkeley.EDU/recipes/)
Yield: about 24 tablespoonsIngredients:
1 cup low-fat cottage cheese
2/3 cup low-fat plain yogurt
2 green onions, chopped
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon Garlic powder
½ teaspoon dried basil
¼ teaspoon dried oreganoProcedure:
In food processor or blender, process cottage cheese and yogurt until smooth. Pour into bowl and add remaining ingredients. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes so flavors meld. Can store for two or three days before serving. Stir before serving.
What's Your Take on This, Julie?
You won't even miss the fat in this version of the original. One tablespoon of Creamy Ranch Salad Dressing contains about 13 calories and less than 1 gram of fat, plus about 2 percent of the daily calcium recommendation. Commercial ranch dressing made from a mix usually contains 30 calories and 2 grams of fat per tablespoon.
Despite its versatility, ranch dressing is most at home on salad, and a trip through your favorite salad bar is a good way to add fiber, vitamins and minerals to your diet. Plus, eating salads helps you achieve the 5-A-Day goal--that's three servings of vegetables and two servings of fruit every day. But depending on your salad-bar selections, you might be heaping on fat and calories too.
Imagine being at a salad bar and picking up your side salad. You begin with a cup of Romaine lettuce, which like most other leafy greens is an excellent source of folic acid and contains only 10 calories and 0.2 grams of fat. As you continue down the line, you add three tablespoons of regular ranch dressing (90 calories, 6 grams fat), two tablespoons of cottage cheese (60 calories, 3 grams fat), and one-half a hard-cooked egg (40 calories, 2.7 grams fat). In the home stretch, you sprinkle on an ounce of sunflower seeds (165 calories, 14 grams fat), a half-ounce of bacon bits (80 calories, 6 grams of fat), an ounce of shredded cheddar (114 calories, 9.4 grams fat) and a half-ounce of croutons (50 calories, 2 grams fat). Your plate of leafy greens and toppings now totals more than 600 calories and 43 grams of fat. Then there's the main course.
At home, consider using the featured recipe, Creamy Ranch Salad Dressing, not only for a salad topper but also as a tasty dip and as a baked potato topper. You might even tempt the most finicky to enjoy some vegetables. This dressing gets its smooth texture from the dairy ingredients that it contains--yogurt and cottage cheese.
Cottage cheese is an excellent source of protein and calcium, and it will vary in calories and fat depending on the type of carton you pick up in the store. Cottage cheese is an unripened cheese made from milk, with the addition of an enzyme or a lactic acid bacteria to coagulate, or clot, the milk. Regular cottage cheese, made from whole milk, contains 4 percent fat by weight, which translates to about 220 calories and 9.5 grams of fat per cup. By comparison, cottage cheese made from reduced-fat milk (2 percent) contains about 200 calories and 4.4 grams of fat. Carton labels will indicate the percentage of fat in the cheese.
One potential downside of cottage cheese is its sodium content: about 920 milligrams per cup. People on reduced-sodium diets often need to limit cottage cheese in their diets.
It's important to remember, though, that all foods can fit into a healthy diet. But if you're in a piling-on mode and you don't want to wrestle with extra pounds on your own frame, load your plate with more carrots and broccoli and go easy on the higher-fat choices. Choose the "lite" salad dressing and sprinkle on the extras with a light hand. If you're attempting weight loss and prefer regular dressing, order the dressing on the side and dip your fork into the dressing before spearing your greens. That way, you'll get the taste without as much of the fat.
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Sources: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136
Julie Garden-Robinson (701) 231-7187
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