Restaurant-Style Ranch Dressing - LOW CAL!

I'm am a complete trend-follower when it comes to ranch dressing. I absolutely love it. I think that just about every food (certainly every bread product) is enhanced by a quick dip in ranch dressing.  On salads, I do love vinaigrettes, but nothing can compare to my love of ranch.  I don't eat it on salads much at home, however, because I don't really like the bottled stuff. It's too thick, usually too salty, sometimes the dill is too strong - it's nothing like the creamy, smooth stuff you get at a restaurant.  I've tried to make it at home and the result always tasted like the bottled stuff.  That is, until I found this recipe on pinterest.

I was hesitant because my experience with plain Greek yogurt is that the end result tastes like, well, plain Greek yogurt.  I didn't think this would possibly work, but it did! This recipe creates a thin, savory ranch dressing that's just like the restaurants serve!  I might use a little less milk in the future (or a little more yogurt) because it is quite runny, but flavor-wise, it's a 10!  I even had one of my ranch-crazy co-workers sample it and she agreed!

Best of all? The entire recipe is 255 calories. That's about 10 calories per tablespoon! Where are you going to find numbers like that on the salad dressing aisle?

Restaurant-Style Ranch Dressing

The recipe comes from The Caffeinated Chronicles of Motherhood (great title!)

Ingredients

1 cup plain, nonfat Greek yogurt

1 packet Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix

1/2 cup lowfat milk (the calculations are for 1%)

Directions:

Combine, stir, refrigerate!  

I ate mine right away, but the website suggested letting it meld for an hour in the fridge. The comments section of the original blog suggested stirring a little cottage cheese in as well.  I'm a purist, however.  This is so spot-on I will probably make a habit of keeping ranch dressing packets in my cupboard! Or better yet, I'll make my own!