An easy homemade ranch dressing with a delicious smoky kick! This skinny ranch dressing tastes amazing as a salad dressing or a dipping sauce. Made with dried herbs, you probably have all the ingredients to hand already! You can either make this with 100% greek yogurt or 50% mayo / 50% yogurt.

easy smoky ranch dressing

I try not to get into the habit of buying pre-bottled ranch. It seems dangerous to have it so accessible. I would just eat it with everything.

The trouble is, now that I’ve discovered how easy it can be to make a good ranch… we maaaaay have a problem.

Although, maybe not too much of a problem because now we can make ranch healthy! You’ve got two choices here:

Make this ranch with equal parts mayonnaise + greek yogurt

Doing this gives you a rich, silky, pourable sauce. It is quite delicious. Use a fat free yogurt if you like – the texture and taste won’t suffer for it with all that mayonnaise.

Make this a purely yogurt based ranch dressing

You can make this dressing entirely with plain or greek yogurt. With yogurt based salad dressings, I like to add a little olive oil. Adding some oil content makes the dressing is a bit more water resistant, and less likely to dilute and disappear into the bowl if you add a lot of wet ingredients to your salad.

If you really want to get the calories down, you could use fat free yogurt.

It’s up to you!

easy smoky ranch dressing

How to make your ranch smoky

Smoky and pink.

That is the work of smoked paprika!

It sits perfectly alongside the dill, chive and other herbs, lending a smoky edge to the dressing. So it would be perfect for a taco salad.

I actually served it with roasted chickpeas, tomatoes and a hard boiled egg. I made a big batch of dressing, then hard boiled lots of eggs and roasted lots of chickpeas and voila!– mason jar salads for the whole week!

So let’s make a batch!

The recipe uses all dried herbs and spices, so hopefully will be really easy to pull together for a weeknight meal as long as you have some fresh yogurt, mayo (if using) and a lemon to hand.

This will give you enough ranch to eat some now, and then fill up a 1/2 litre mason jar with the rest.

Smoky Yogurt Ranch Dressing

An easy homemade ranch dressing with a delicious smoky kick! This skinny ranch dressing tastes amazing as a salad dressing or a dipping sauce. Made with dried herbs, you probably have all the ingredients to hand already! You can either make this with 100% greek yogurt or 50% mayo / 50% yogurt.
5 from 1 rating

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (240 ml) fat free greek yogurt
  • 1 cup (240 ml) mayonnaise , or another cup of fat free greek yogurt + 1 Tbsp of olive oil
  • Juice of 1 large lemon
  • 2 tsp dijon mustard
  • 2 Tbsp dried dill
  • 2 Tbsp dried chives
  • 2 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tsp white wine vinegar
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp dried parsley
  • 1 tsp dried basil
  • Optional : milk, to thin it out

Instructions 

  • Combine all ingredients in a bowl.
  • If your ranch is very thick (possible with very thick greek yogurt) and you want a more pourable texture, add some milk until you achieve the right texture.
  • Refrigerate for as long as you can before serving to allow the flavors to develop, at least 2 hours.

Notes

If making with all yogurt, depending on the brand you use, you may find the taste too sour – you might wish to add in a little honey or agave syrup if that is the case.
Serving: 1g, Calories: 135kcal, Carbohydrates: 6g, Protein: 2g, Fat: 11g, Saturated Fat: 2g, Polyunsaturated Fat: 9g, Cholesterol: 8mg, Sodium: 136mg, Fiber: 1g, Sugar: 4g