Last year I was doing some archaeology-level digging into Burt’s Bees and I stumbled upon a corner of their website that left me feeling all sorts of unexpected emotions. Intrigue. Confusion. Disgust. Fascination. Curiosity. It was like the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy, but in lip balm form.
In the years since I stopped buying Burt’s Bees lip balm and making my own, they’re really expanded their product line, and the source of my wonder and bafflement was a collaboration so unique—so innovative—that I thought there’s no way they actually made this… right? But they definitely did it, and sold out completely.
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Burt’s Bees collaborated with Hidden Valley; an American company that is best known for their ranch dressing. For those of you not from a country that embraces ranch dressing; it’s a creamy, tangy, herby salad dressing that really polarizes people. It’s a common option at restaurants and most of the pre-made veggie platters I’ve seen for sale here in Canada come with a container of ranch dip for the carrot and celery sticks.
People who love ranch really love ranch, elevating it from mere salad dressing to all-around condiment. On a post titled “What do you put ranch dressing on?” on r/AskAnAmerican, one Redditor replied “Mostly anything that isn’t dessert. Veggie dip, pizza dip, chicken tenders, fries, wings, salad topping, I’m sure there is more. I love ranch!”
Burt’s made four lip balms for this collaboration and sold them in a pack; Hidden Valley Ranch, Crunchy Celery, Fresh Carrot, and Buffalo Sauce. The 1-star reviews are hilariously split between “disgusting, tastes like ranch” and “I’m so sad, it doesn’t taste enough like ranch.”
People were also REALLY disappointed that they sold out so quickly, leaving many ranch-loving lip balm fiends out in the cold.
I’m pretty ambivalent about ranch dressing, but the “stubbornly DIY” goblin that lives in my brain latched onto this idea and would NOT let go. So I did it. I made ranch dressing lip balm. If you are one of those disappointed ranch dressing lovers who wants to moisturize your mouth with dairy, garlic, and herb scented beeswax-y goodness… you’re welcome, I guess.
I had the lip balm bit sorted already as I spent months creating a dupe of Burt’s Bees back in 2021 and shared that formula in early 2022. The ingredient list for these snack-scented lip balms was slightly different than Burt’s classic lip balm (including castor oil and cocoa butter, and obviously dropping the peppermint), but I’m going to stick with my formula for my base.
With the lip balm bit sorted, I now needed a way to infuse it with a truly overwhelming amount of ranch flavour. I already know those 1-star ranch haters are going to gag at the thought of this lip balm, so I might as well try to make those 1-star “not enough ranch” people happy!
Actual ranch dressing is made from a base of buttermilk, mayonnaise, and sour cream. That base is then flavoured with garlic, dill, chives, parsley, lemon, salt, onion powder, and pepper. The exact seasonings vary from recipe to recipe, but those seem to be the classics.
Since lip balm is an anhydrous product, I couldn’t just add straight ranch dressing to it—it wouldn’t mix in and would be really hard to preserve.
The usual way to flavour lip balm is by using flavour oils, but there’s no such thing as ranch dressing flavour oil (thank heavens). Several of the ingredients do have essential oil versions (lemon, pepper, dill, etc.), but I’ve found herbal essential oils often don’t smell like the herbs taste, so I didn’t think I’d get a very ranch-y vibe from using them.
In order to keep things stable, I figured I needed to go the infused oil route. I thought about making an infused oil using dried herbs from the herb blend, but that wouldn’t have the dairy tang of actual ranch, and it wouldn’t truly be Hidden Valley ranch lip balm.
And then I remembered a product I’d seen at American grocery stores: Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning. A powdered version of ranch dressing that makes it easy to add the flavour of ranch dressing to anything without all that bothersome buttermilky, sour-creamy wetness. Hidden Valley recommends using it on popcorn and trail mix (reading that had me re-considering my ambivalence about ranch dressing and stepping towards the “ew” camp).
The ingredients are: Maltodextrin, Buttermilk, Salt, Monosodium Glutamate, Garlic*, Onion*, Lactic Acid, Calcium Lactate, Spices, Citric Acid, Less Than 1% Of: Calcium Stearate, Artificial Flavor, Xanthan Gum, Carboxymethylcellulose, Guar Gum, Natural Flavor.
We’ve got the dairy. We’ve got the flavourings. We’ve got some maltodextrin to keep it from clumping up. My ordering options were a couple small sachets or a 16 oz container. Worried the small sachets might not be enough to get a level of ranch dressing flavour that would please the true ranch lover, I placed an order for a pound of the stuff waited for it to arrive from the US.
Upon its arrival, I cracked it open and took a whiff. It’s much more garlicky and far less tangy than actual ranch dressing, which I suppose isn’t surprising given the loss of quite a lot of sour cream. And with that whiff, it was time to start making.
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For this project I finally broke out a formulating toy I purchased last year; a Levo. This device is designed for making herbal infusions of all sorts, but is pretty clearly marketed towards people interested in infusions starring one particular herb. A one-on-one client told me about it and I was immediately intrigued by the formulating possibilities, so I ordered one (at full price, with my own money—this is definitely not sponsored). It then proceeded to sit in its box for far too long, just waiting for me to tackle DIY condiment flavoured cosmetics.
I began by making a double strength ranch infused oil. We needed this infused oil to be ranch-y beyond belief because the formula is only about 1/3 liquid oil—so that garlicky tangy herby-ness would have to stand up to being diluted with the beeswax and other oils in the lip balm.
My original stick formula uses sunflower oil (just as Burt’s does), but since the liquid oil was going to be the infusion oil (and would therefore be heated quite for a few hours) I decided to switch to an oil higher in more stable oleic acid—sweet almond oil. Burt’s used sweet almond oil in their original tinned lip balm formulation, so it felt like an on-brand swap.
Several hours later I had a very ranchy smelling oil, with garlic at the forefront and herbs rounding it out. Perfect. With my aggressively snack-scented oil complete, all that was left was turning it into a lip balm.
I swapped the peppermint essential oil in my original formulation for more ranch-y almond oil, and made sure to use refined beeswax, coconut oil, and lanolin so nothing would interfere with my precious ranch infusion.
Combine, melt, stir, pour, and wait.
Once the lip balms set up, it was time for the moment of truth.
… it’s gross. 0/10; I don’t recommend it at all. Save your ranch for your salads, popcorn, wings, and pizza!
Happy April Fools!
(As fun as this was, don’t make this. The ranchy scent only lasted a couple days [even the infused oil smelled like nothing by day 5] and it was kind of irritating on the lips.)
This is such a hysterical innaugural use of your Levo!
I will admit that after a few trial successful runs with that “particular” herb, I found myself bored. I started experiementing with Arnica and Moringa whole plant in coconut oil and now it is a staple infusion for my small business. It genuinely made the achey body product more effective. I have the Levo C, despite its large capacity I’m glad you went with the model you did. No carafe to break accidentally! Which I absolutely did a while back, oops.