Mayo! Mayo!

It may come as a surprise (???) to some, but mayonnaise is simply an emulsion of egg and oil. Unless you buy “mayonnaise style dressing” like miracle whip. ick ick. I chucked my container of it after reading the ingredients. Why I bought it in the first place? No clue. Moment of weakness?

So I made my own mayo.  I do believe I yelled out something incredibly lame like “By golly, I finally did it! I made me some mayonnaise!…” followed by “I did it! I did it! I did it!” where Mr. Foodie and Kiddo probably thought I was nuts. Anyway, yup. After one colossal fail and a few mediocre attempts, I made homemade mayonnaise! I’ve got my technique down pat.

I’ve tried the recipe from The Clothes Make the Girl and Nom Nom Paleo, and they are both pretty similar. I used olive oil for both versions, but the big difference is that Nomnom’s only uses the yolk instead of the whole egg. Meh. I don’t find much of a taste difference either. Mr. Foodie said it looked weird and yellow. I told him to F#$% O@#$ (mmmhmmm…)

It’s true when “they” say it’s all about the technique.  I’ve tried it in the food processor before, and I tried it by hand (owwiiee.. my arm hurts. I’m such a wimp), but then I had the genius idea to use the whisk attachment for my Cuisinart Smart Stick (yeah, didn’t I tell you to go get an immersion blender before?) Genius. Perfect. Of course this managed a careful technique of using my hip and raised leg to hold the bowl against the counter so that I had one hand free to drizzle oil and another free to do the whipping. Consequently, there was no third hand to take photos. But I took a photo of the final product: Beautiful! Nice thick consistency, finally!! 

I got a new Ninja Blender/food processor and I wanted to try it for mayo. It was a fail because the small amount that the emulsion starts with doesn’t go high enough for the blades to catch. Boo urns. I tried tilting it, and working around it, but the mayo was one big flop. unsalvageable. This is what we call a #mayofail #faileo. Not good. Nasty. Looked like melted butter!

But the successful homemade mayo is so delicious! I used it to make homemade ranch dressing!  And cumin-lime dressing from Well-Fed! I guesstimated the cumin-lime recipe since Kiddo was hogging the iPad so I couldn’t check my copy. Didn’t put in the jalapeno. Close enough!

Have you ever tried to make your own mayonnaise? It’s really not as hard as you’d think!

3 thoughts on “Mayo! Mayo!

  1. I’ve made mayo twice in my Ninja blender with great success both times – not sure why yours isn’t working on the initial blend. I’m using the recipe from “It Starts With Food”, which is probably similar to Melissa Joulwan’s recipe. Just be sure you’re adding the oil at a slow trickle – I used a recycled agave squirt bottle to add the oil on the second batch and it worked like a dream!

    • It takes me about 5 minutes to drizzle all the oil in. Every other method I’ve used works well except the Ninja. No matter, because the Ninja was returned to Costco and I’m getting a Vitamix instead! My favourite method is the Cuisinart smart stick with the whisk attachment!

  2. I use to do the slow drizzle in a blender technique myself with great success. Well, after I figured out all the temperature & speed variables anyway. Now adays I use the really simple and fast way of a stick blender (or some call it an immersion blender). I just bought a cheap $14 Proctor & Silex brand and it works beautifully. All you do is dump everything… yes everything including all of your oil… into a jar with a mouth wide enough to fit your stick blender into. You then let everything settle, gently place your blender in and set it all the way to the bottom of the jar so that it is covering the egg yolk, pulse it several times to get the emulsion going, and then just very slow raise the stick as you run the blender continuously. About the time you get to the top, you may need to slide off any unmixed ingredients that are sitting ontop of your blender into the jar and mix that all in, but other than that… you are done! It takes maybe a minute to a minute and a half to mix. That’s it! – Stick blenders are a beautiful thing =). Oh and by the way, if it will help to watch a video of this process, there are numerous tutorials on YouTube covering this subject of Mayo and stick/immersion blenders.