PicoBlog

Hello, clowns!

Today’s post is all about the Midwestern mother sauce, ranch dressing.

Midwesterners have a very unusual relationship with ranch dressing for some reason. It’s mostly an obsession with the dressing itself. But then there’s ranch-flavored products, and pairing the sauce with things that seem like an unlikely combination, such as pizza. It seems as if Midwesterners like to put ranch on nearly everything.

Now, ranch dressing is a subject I have covered before. I’ve previously made ranch dressing thumbprint cookies, and I’ve also made ranch dressing water, which was an homage to the alcoholic beverage also known as ranch water. But the thing is, I found a product that is so bizarre that I absolutely had to get it, and it does in fact involve ranch dressing.

I’d heard rumbles about a product called Flip Whip last week.

When I saw the photo of it floating around the internet, my jaw dropped. Brace yourselves, because you’re not ready for this.

Flip Whip is dressing that comes out of a spray can. Someone fucking made dressing that you spray. This isn’t out of just any spray can, but the same kind that bottled whipped cream comes in. There’s a ranch variety as well as a blue cheese flavor.

I tried explaining this to my sister on the phone, and after a long moment of silence, she just began laughing.

After some digging around on Flip Whip’s website, I learned that it’s only available at a grocery store chain called Woodman’s. If you’ve never heard of Woodman’s, that’s because it’s been mostly local to parts of Wisconsin and northern Illinois now. Woodman’s is fantastic. It’s easily the largest grocery store I’ve ever seen, and it carries an absurd variety of food, many brands of which I’d never seen elsewhere.

Davida and I had to be up in Wisconsin last weekend (for a sad reason, unfortunately), but on the way home we dropped by a Woodman’s location in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and guess what we grabbed?

That’s right. We got both kinds of Flip Whip. Today, we’re going with ranch.

When you wield that much culinary power in a spray can, it’s hard to decide what to do with it.

So after some deliberation, I decided to build a Midwestern nacho tray (let’s ignore the fact that I recently tackled a different kind of nachos), where every single component of it had ranch flavor violently crammed in it.

I purchased Cool Ranch Doritos, Flamin’ Hot Cool Ranch Doritos, Cool Ranch Dorito’s-flavored Lay’s potato chips (which are a limited-time thing right now), along with pickled jalapeños and ground beef that I’d season with ranch dressing powder, queso dip that I’d mix with ranch dressing, and top it all with even more ranch dressing and the ranch dressing Flip Whip product.

I theorized that there are no people on Earth who could tolerate this much ranch dressing in one mouthful without dying. Which is why I bravely volunteered my body for this task.

I first browned some ground beef.

If there’s anything else Midwestern Americans love to eat other than ranch dressing, it’s ground-up cow. After the meat cooked, I added a hefty dose of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing powder to it. I added the powder in batches; after I decided I’d added enough, the meat had sort of a tacky coating on each little bit.

Then I took some pickled jalapeños and tossed them in even more Hidden Valley Ranch powder.

They looked absolutely disgusting after that. The peppers were already relatively low quality (I’ve never seen any so mushy), but once the ranch powder hit the moisture of the pepper slices, it caked on real thick. Bravo! Or like Midwesterners like to say, “Ope!”

I then carefully assembled the chip base on the tray.

The colors of yellow, khaki, and Flamin’ Hot red looked a lot like a combination of fall leaves. There was something really poetic about that, especially when the scent of three Cool Ranch-flavored items wafted up and lodged itself permanently in my nasal cavities. And my ass.

I then microwaved some shitty jarred queso dip and poured Hidden Valley Ranch dressing right into it, and mixed it together.

It was time to assemble my Midwestern nacho tray.

I spread the ground beef all over the chips and began to drizzle ranched-up queso artfully over the top.

Then I put the ranch powder-tossed jalapeños on top and applied a tiny extra drizzle of ranch dressing.

I didn’t want to go too crazy, you know?

Of course, we had to try the Flip Whip by itself. The dead expression on my face in this photo should say everything.

I gave some to Davida on a spoon and then, like a degenerate, dispensed some directly into my hole(s). After I closed my mouth I immediately winced. Ever have salty and sour whipped cream dosed directly into the back of your throat?

(Keep the dirty comments to yourself. Actually, put them in the comments section.)

Clowns, this stuff is really bizarre. I both enjoyed and despised it at the same time. All Davida said was that she liked it, and that it tasted like ranch to her (real descriptive, I know); I had more mixed feelings about it, since I wasn’t as big of a fan of its tartness and whipped cream foaminess. I think I’m so used to sweet Reddi Whip that this stuff kind of sucker punched me from an unexpected, yet expected, direction.

I let the gang admire my handiwork for a moment before we dug into the ultimate ranch tray.

I think they were delighted and disgusted. It was sort of hard to tell, since their expressions are always the same at all times. That keeps me guessing as to how they’re feeling, and they love playing mind games with me, as you can see.

Down the hatch and hopefully not back up the hatch!

I grabbed a chip with a little bit of everything on it, shoved it in my mouth, and started chewing. I was immediately bulldozed by taste. I am not sure that I’ve ever had that much concentrated flavor at the same time. In fact, that might have been even more ranch flavor than I’d experienced in my entire life, all in one bite.

What was remarkable was that even after I’d swallowed the food, the ranch dressing flavor grew stronger, like my taste buds were catching up to the sheer amount of engineered seasoning in this shit. It was the ranchiest ranch that ever ranched. I am both delighted and appalled that I actually wrote that last sentence.

Davida had a lot to say. She said, “It tastes like an anxiety attack.” Then, a few moments later, she said, “It’s like the flavor equivalent of TV static.”

She wasn’t wrong. I did indeed feel anxious. No single person should wield that much flavor at once. I could feel the power of ranch-everything clutch its talons into my tongue and suddenly found myself craving another chip.

But I had this strange realization as I was lifting the next one to my mouth. What I’d truly done was taste the entire Midwest all at once. The only other being capable of doing that is God.

I found myself pulsing with a sparkly light. Davida was too, from her spot on the couch. We were suddenly on a different plane of existence.

Then I whispered to myself and said: “Ope!”

That was quite the tasting journey. Don’t forget to share Food is Stupid on social media, everyone. Despite the garbaginess of it all, it helps grow the newsletter. Hell, forward the email to people you love, too:

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And don’t forget to sign up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers go on further excursions with me; later this week for paid subscribers, I’m going to be making a Buffalo chicken dessert in a glass, and I’ll be topping it with the blue cheese-flavored version of Flip Whip. I’m about as excited as you are. (Read that how you will.)

Paid subscribers also get access to the full archives, including all the previous paid material, at foodisstupid.substack.com or via the mobile Substack app, which I highly recommend you download, available for both flavors of phone operating systems, Apple and Android.

Finally, congratulations to Zach, who won the last Made In Cookware pan giveaway! He would like you to donate to World Central Kitchen, which is an organization most of you are probably aware of by now. If you aren’t, they feed people in disaster-stricken areas across the world and are often first responders in locations where food has become difficult to obtain.

You know the sign-off. As always, I love you all, and see a select few of you later this week. Subscribe, fools!

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