Consumer Reports' Highest-Rated Ranch Dressing Is Sold At Walmart

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Love smothering your green salad in store-bought Ranch dressing? Tangy, herby, and garlicky, this iconic dressing can also be spread on sammies, mixed into coleslaw, or even whisked into a batch of scrambled eggs, so selecting the best you can find is a strategic culinary move. According to Consumer Reports, the highest-rated candidate on the market is Primal Kitchen's ranch dressing & marinade made with avocado oil, available at Walmart. This product beat stiff competition from brands including 88 Acres Garden, Bolthouse Farms, and Tessemae's, scoring highly in both the nutrition and sensory categories.

The feature that sets Primal Kitchen's ranch dressing apart from other store-bought options is the presence of avocado oil versus seed oils, such as canola, vegetable, or soybean oil (Hidden Valley ranch dressing, which didn't make the top five in the report, is made with a blend of vegetable oils). As avocado oil doesn't go through the same processing as other oils, it remains unrefined and retains some of its nutritional benefits, such as being high in monounsaturated fats that are good for heart health. The dressing is also free from cane sugar, corn syrup, and other artificial sweeteners that can be found in competitor brands, which likely explains why it graded so well for its nutritional value. Finally, the dressing is dairy-free too because it doesn't contain buttermilk; its creaminess comes from the combination of the avocado oil, egg yolks, and potato starch.

Primal Kitchen's dressing has garnered over 4,000 five-star reviews on the Walmart website, with shoppers praising its excellent taste and quality ingredients. One shopper said, "This is the only ranch dressing I will put on my salad. I love that it doesn't contain seed oils. The flavor is the best I've ever had, store bought. Thank you Walmart for carrying this cleaner option." Meanwhile, another reviewer said, "Ordered this for my Mom, since she needed gluten/lactose free. I wasn't really expecting it to be so good, but it's actually better than regular ranch, I'm shocked! It's a bit expensive but worth it for her to have her favorite dressing with no digestive issues!

Aside from being used to top green salads or employed as a dipping sauce for a platter of crunchy veggies, Primal Kitchen's ranch dressing doubles as a marinade for protein. The acid in the apple cider vinegar in the recipe acts as a tenderizer, encouraging the muscle fibers in chicken, beef, and pork to soften and provide a characteristic tang. There's also a dash of nutritional yeast in the recipe, which gives it a boost of umami personality and fills some of the flavor gap created by the absence of a rich dairy product.