Of all the things you should be making at home instead of buying, mayo is one of them. Here’s why:
1) All mainstream brands of mayo are made with cheap GMO oils like soy, canola and cotton.
2) Some brands use gums and thickeners to make up for cheap ingredients.
3) Even if you buy an organic brand, they’re still made with inferior ingredients compared to what you could make at home.
4) Making mayo takes mere minutes.
5) Homemade mayo taste can be altered to what you like best. See below!
6) Homemade mayo tastes FAR SUPERIOR to anything from a store.
If you’ve never made mayo, here are a few things to know.
Mayo is an emulsion. That means you’re blending water and oil together so they don’t separate. This can be done by adding something like mustard or by how you blend it.
The blending options I have used are an immersion blender and my high-speed blender. I’ve had great success with both but they use different methods.
If you’re going to use the immersion blender method, you need to make sure everything is at room temperature and that your whole egg is on the bottom. You should use a tall container in which the blender blades fit snugly at the bottom. If the container is too wide at the bottom you will have difficulty blending it effectively.
Also, for no apparent reason (and this can be confirmed by any number of posts online) sometimes the emulsion doesn’t get as thick as others. No fear, you can “fix” thin mayo by putting another egg yolk and a little mustard (it’s a magic little emulsifier) in another tall cup, adding the thin mayo on top and reblending.
The immersion blender is my favorite method but I’ve found it less consistent than using a blender that streams oil in slowly. My Wolf blender has this amazing little cup at the top that ensures the oil drizzles in slowly and consistently making the perfect mayonnaise every. single. time. If you’re using a regular countertop blender, that will work too! You’ll just need to drizzle really slowly but the results, I’m sure, will be fantastic. It’s homemade mayo, for Heaven’s sake.
There are lots of posts out there on homemade mayo. It’s not lost on me that I’m kind of late to the game of food blogging. But, one thing that’s not mentioned is that when you’re using pastured eggs with a rich, orange yolk, your mayo might not be perfectly snow white.
Over the years I’ve actually come to suspect white products as being less nutritious and unnaturally-made so as to fulfill our society’s ridiculous need for sterility and “perfection.” I’ve learned to embrace the different sized eggs my chickens gift me. I’ve learned to accept that grass-fed cuts of beef are not the gigantic, medium-red pieces I’ve used for years. Instead, they are smaller, leaner and much darker in color implying more concentrated nutrition for the consumer. {end rant}
The recipe I’m going to give you specifies olive oil. Feel free to use another kind of oil such as avocado or safflower. I try not to use much processed seed oils (safflower or sunflower) but I do keep it in the house for times I’d like my olive oil to be more neutral in flavor. Not everyone loves the olive oil flavor.
I use pink Himalayan salt here for the extra minerals it offers.
Pastured eggs are the only thing I use.
Fresh squeezed lemon juice will always taste better than the bottled stuff, even if it’s organic.
I use Apple Cider Vinegar but white wine vinegar is lovely too.
I use organic dijon mustard.
So, let’s get to the base recipe!
- 1 whole egg
- 1 egg yolk
- ¼ tsp. salt
- 2 Tbls. vinegar
- 2 Tbls. lemon juice
- 2 c. oil
- IMMERSION BLENDER:
- Place all ingredients in the container in the order listed.
- Place blender blade at the bottom and blend until it becomes mayo!
- It should take about 10 seconds.
- COUNTERTOP BLENDER:
- Place all ingredients in blender except oil.
- Turn blender on and begin drizzling oil in very slowly until all oil is added.
- It should take a minute or two.
Now, if you think that’s good, you should give these three mayo flavors a try! Use them on anything from sandwiches to crepes to part of a recipe for a dressing. The possibilities are unlimited!
To make HERBED MAYO add 1 Tablespoon of fresh herbs of choice to the mayo recipe. Parsley, thyme and oregano are a great choice.
To make SIRACHA MAYO add 2 tsp. Siracha sauce and 1 tsp. of chili flakes to the mayo recipe. Feel free to make this as HOT as you like by adding more of each flavoring. I’m a wimp with hot stuff.
To make BERRY MAYO add 2 Tbls. of mixed berry jam to the mayo recipe. We use this on crepes filled with ham and Brie cheese. It’s a-mazing.
That should get you started with flavorful mayo! Experiment! Go crazy! You can always make more …