How Long Is Ranch Good For After Opening The Bottle?
It's hard to overstate just how much Americans love their ranch dressing. In 2017, the Association for Dressings and Sauces determined that ranch was the most popular salad condiment in the U.S., with a full 40% of Americans deeming it their favorite. But our passionate love affair with ranch is now so much bigger than dressing pasta salad and greens; we love it as a sauce for tenders at Chick-fil-A, as a dip for our french fries, slathered on burgers, and even on top of pizza.
If you always keep a chilled bottle of ranch in your fridge for easy grabbing, you're far from alone. Maybe you use so much ranch it never has a chance to go bad, but if you aren't a complete ranch fiend (more of a casual ranch enjoyer), you may be wondering how long your sauce will stay good for after opening. Unless you make it fresh, ranch dressing is shelf-stable. Does that mean that it's safe to eat indefinitely? Not quite. Refrigerated ranch has a shelf life of six to nine months, but it does, in fact, go bad eventually.
Ranch will go the distance, but watch for signs of spoilage
Unlike salad greens, which require paper towel hacks to keep them fresh for a mere week, ranch is a sturdy food product. Store-bought ranch dressing is made shelf-stable by high-pressure processing to kill off microorganisms that can promote spoilage and make you sick. It also contains preservative ingredients to ensure long-term freshness.
These precautions are so solid, in fact, that you may be able to safely continue using your bottled ranch even beyond its sell-by date. As long as your dressing doesn't give off any funky odors, show visible signs of mold, or taste weird, you can (cautiously) use up the rest of the container.
Of course, you should throw all this guidance out the window if you're dealing with homemade ranch. If you use a powdered base, like Hidden Valley, and combine it with a dairy product like buttermilk or sour cream, you're limited by the milk product's shelf life, which is much shorter. In this case, your ranch is probably only safe to eat for around two weeks.