This 1 Ingredient Makes Every Vegetable Taste So Much Better

I've never met a condiment I didn't like, and much more often, it's something like love. When I recently scrolled upon a jar of Hidden Valley Ranch Chili Crunch in my Instagram feed, it was infatuation at first sight. I had a jar in my pantry a few days later. The chili crunch is a collaboration between Top Chef Winner, Stephanie Izard's brand "This Little Goat" and the GOAT of dressing, Hidden Valley Ranch, so I had every reason to believe it would be incredible, and I'm happy to report I was not wrong.

What Makes Ranch Chili Crunch So Special?

This limited-time special Ranch Chili Crunch combines the tangy, herbaceous notes of ranch seasoning with dried chiles and fried garlic, plus an extra pop of crunch from puffed rice and crispy masa chips. So, it follows that this would be a great back-pocket condiment for bringing a ton of flavor and texture to just about everything. It won't be available much longer so act now if you want to snag a jar.

How to Use Ranch Chili Crunch

I started with a simple test: Could this chili crisp perk up my morning hard-boiled eggs? Indeed, it could. I moved on to draping the chili crunch over soft tofu in a bowl of steamy rice. There were fireworks of flavor and delightful pockets of crunchiness. But the real game changer was when I started adding Ranch Chili Crunch to roasted vegetables. I tossed some oven-baked crispy broccoli in Ranch Chili Crunch, and my 11-year-old "broccoli hater" went back for seconds.

I have a secret formula that can convert various vegetable haters into fanatics, and here it is: vegetable + chili crisp + something creamy = success. While you can use any chili crisp for this formula, the Ranch Chili Crunch, with its unique tanginess and big crunch energy, takes the prize. In terms of something creamy, think labneh, Greek yogurt, or sour cream.

The formula is so fool-proof and adaptable that I've come to lean on it year-round, employing it for cruciferous veggies like roasted Brussels sprouts and broccoli in the winter, fresh radishes and salad turnips in the spring, raw cucumbers and grilled zucchini throughout summer, and butternut squash and root vegetables in the fall. The formula works every time; it's like the Pythagorean Theorem of vegetable cookery.

What Else Can You Do With Ranch Chili Crunch?

The phrase "put it on everything" gets tossed around a lot, but this chili crunch is a good candidate for that kind of treatment. For an easy weeknight dinner, I like to slather it on chicken leg quarters and then bake them. The skin gets crispy, and the chicken is perfectly seasoned. The same goes for chicken wings. The crunch also has a way of transforming store-bought dumplings into a restaurant-quality meal and elevating plain ramen noodles into a bowl of bliss. With moves like that, it's no wonder this chili crunch is taking up permanent residence in my kitchen—as long as I can get my hands on it.