Our allergy friendly ranch dressing is thick, creamy, flavorful and works as either a dressing or a dip. Our homemade ranch dressing is easy to make and it’s gluten free, dairy free, and nut free!
When you’re in the mood for salads and fresh veggies, there’s nothing quite like a cool and creamy ranch dressing to go with it!
If you have dairy allergies (or multiple food allergies), finding a really good ranch dressing can be tough. There are several allergy friendly brands of commercial ranch on the market, but we’ve found most of them miss the mark.
Or the ones we loved (Just Ranch was our favorite packaged dairy free ranch) stopped being made.
Since we really missed a good ranch dressing and we weren’t completely satisfied with the options available to us, I decided to just make our own recipe for dairy free and allergy friendly ranch dressing!
Our version of ranch dressing is thick, creamy, flavorful, and works amazingly well as either a dressing or a dip. It’s one of the best ranch dressings I’ve tried, but we might be a little biased!
This recipe also uses ingredients you likely already have in your pantry or fridge. There are no odd ingredients (like beans), no tofu, no nuts, and you don’t need a blender to make this ranch. Just a whisk!
This recipe is:
- Dairy free
- Vegan (if using egg free mayo)
- Gluten free
- Soy free
- Nut free
Please note that the allergy-friendliness of this recipe depends on the ingredients you choose, so make sure to choose ingredients that fit your individual food allergies!
How to make dairy free ranch dressing
Homemade dairy free ranch dressing is crazy easy with just a few steps!
Don’t forget the full recipe card is at the end of the post.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the mayo, sour cream (or yogurt), and the apple cider vinegar until smooth.
- Whisk in the rest of the ingredients until smooth and store in a jar or airtight container in the fridge for 1-2 weeks.
- If you want to use this as a thicker dip, stir in an additional 2-4 Tablespoons of mayo until it is the thickness you desire.
We love the garlic and onion flavors in this ranch, but if you don’t want as much garlic flavor, you can start with less garlic powder and add more if you want.
Also you can skip the onion powder as well if you like and just let the dried chives add the onion flavor if you like.
The same goes for the dill: if you prefer less dill, start with less and taste test to see if you’d like to add more. You can always make the batch exactly as written, then make adjustments as you any other batches you decide to make down the road. It’s easy to customize!
Just remember that you can always add more of something to a recipe, but you can’t take it away once you’ve added it. So err on the side of less then add more if you want to adjust the flavors.
The hardest part about this ranch is sourcing the ingredients, but we’re including some options for allergy friendly mayo and sour cream and which brands we like best.
What kind of soy free mayo should I use?
Since the mayo makes up the bulk of this recipe, make sure that you’re using one that you love. You don’t want to have your ranch dressing recipe ruined by a mediocre or weird tasting mayo!
For our dairy free ranch, we chose to use our favorite soy free and egg free mayo of all time: Just Mayo. Everyone has different tastes, but this one has been our favorite out of every other brand we’ve tried.
They’d have some weird supply issues and I’ve not been able to find this for sale for months (actually probably a full year) and I gave up on ever seeing it again. Then we went to the Whole Foods in Fort Collins, CO, and to my pleasant surprise I found it on the shelf in by the cut veggies!!
If you love this brand, they are still making it and (hopefully) will keep making it since it is better than anything else we’ve tried.
If you can’t find Just Mayo or don’t like that brand of mayo, here are a few other soy free options (we’ve marked which ones contain eggs).
- Sir Kensington regular mayo (contains eggs); this one tastes all right, but we still prefer Just Mayo.
- Sir Kensington’s vegan mayo: we thought this one tasted a bit weird personally.
- Vegenaise soy free: it’s been years since I’ve had this since it’s hard to find in my area without paying a ton, but I do remember that I liked it. I’m not sure if they have changed their recipe or anything over the years.
- Better Body Foods avocado oil mayo (contains eggs): we didn’t like the taste of this one at all, but it’s an option if you like it or can’t find alternatives.
- Smart Balance Light Mayo (contains eggs): this one didn’t taste too bad, but we still prefer Just Mayo.
Here are some of the other available brands out there that are soy free and that we haven’t tried:
- Thrive Market coconut oil mayo (contains eggs)
- Thrive Market vegan mayo
- Primal Kitchen avocado oil mayo (contains eggs)
- Chosen Foods vegan mayo
- Tessemae’s mayo (contains eggs)
What kind of dairy free sour cream should I use for ranch dressing?
I have used a few different brands of dairy free sour cream, and I prefer the Follow Your Heart sour cream, which is coconut milk based and the best tasting (we think). But we’ve been having a hard time finding this one in stores lately, it’s been backordered for a while for some reason.
We have also tried the Good Karma sour cream, but our family didn’t like the taste of that one very much.
If you are wanting to keep this soy free, avoid using Tofutti brand of sour cream since it’s soy-based. If you’re not concerned about soy though, this is a good option!
A few other options if you can have nuts are Kite Hill sour cream (made with almonds) and the Forager sour cream (made with cashews). I haven’t tried either of these brands since my daughter has tree nut allergies (excluding coconut), but they are available options.
Simple Truth Organic has a plant-based sour cream available that is made with butter beans, but I can’t eat a lot of beans so we haven’t tried this one yet either.
What if I can’t find dairy free sour cream?
If you can’t locate a good dairy free sour cream, you can use a plain, unsweetened dairy free yogurt instead!
Since we actually couldn’t locate our favorite dairy free sour cream (the Follow Your Heart brand), I just ended up using the So Delicious plain and unsweetened yogurt made with coconut milk for our ranch and it turned out great.
It’s not quite as thick as the Follow Your Heart sour cream, but it’s thick enough, and it still has that nice tanginess to it. The So Delicious unsweetened plain yogurt has no sweetness to it, so you don’t have to worry about weird flavors in your dairy free ranch dressing!
Note that the So Delicious plain yogurt is not the same as the unsweetened plain yogurt. If it’s not specifically labeled as unsweetened, the So Delicious plain coconut yogurt still has some sugar in it.
You’ll want to use the unsweetened and plain yogurt for this recipe if you don’t use dairy free sour cream.
Check out some of our other dairy free condiments and dips:
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Creamy Dairy Free Ranch Dressing
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup soy free & egg free mayo* (we used Just Mayo)
- ¼ cup dairy free sour cream OR dairy free plain unsweetened yogurt (we used So Delicious plain unsweetened coconut yogurt)
- 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
- 1 teaspoon brown mustard
- 1 teaspoon lightly crushed freeze dried chives
- ¼ teaspoon garlic powder** (or 1/8 teaspoon if you want less garlic taste)
- ¼ teaspoon dried parsley
- ¼ teaspoon dried dill weed
- ⅛ teaspoon onion powder (optional, if you want more onion flavor than the chives have)
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- Dash black pepper
Instructions
- In a small bowl, whisk together the mayo, sour cream (or yogurt), and the apple cider vinegar until smooth.
- Whisk in the rest of the ingredients until smooth and store in a jar or airtight container in the fridge for 1-2 weeks.
- If you want to use this as a thicker dip, stir in an additional 2-4 Tablespoons of mayo until it is the thickness you desire.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Sarah Jane Parker is the founder, recipe creator, and photographer behind The Fit Cookie. She’s a food allergy mom and healthy living blogger based in Wyoming. Sarah is also an ACSM Certified Personal Trainer, ACE Certified Health Coach, Revolution Running certified running coach, and an ACE Certified Fitness Nutrition Specialist
Can I use all sour cream as I have not found a mayo I can use because of some of the ingredients
Hi Teresa, you can try this using all sour cream, however it won’t have quite the same taste since it won’t have as much fat content in it.