Fast, Easy And Better Than Store Bought
Do you use a lot of mayonnaise at your
house? I don't, and used to be I'd go out and buy the smallest jar I
could find and still end up throwing more than half of it away. So I
recommended to my wife, the family mayonnaise eater, that we start
making our own. After all, we make bearnaise, hollandaise, and just
about everything else from scratch, so why not mayonnaise?
Mayo has been around for a while. Early
references can be found as far back as the beginning of the
nineteenth century. Nobody is certain of the real origin story of the
stuff and there are several floating around, including the most
popular notion that it came from the town of Mahón in Menorca,
Spain, where it was known as salsa mahonesa in Spanish and and as
maonesa or maionesa in Catalan. It later migrated to France where it
became known as mayonnaise.
Regardless of from whence it came,
here's what mayonnaise is: a stable emulsion. What's an emulsion?
Chemically, it's a mixing of two substances that normally don't mix.
Like oil and water. In the case of mayonnaise, it's an emulsion of
oil, eggs, and either vinegar or lemon juice. Other ingredients
provide added flavor, but those are the essential three.
And that's another reason I started
making my own mayonnaise. Above and beyond the cost and waste factors
is the control of what I choose to consume. And preservatives and
“stabilizers” are generally not among those choices.
Here's a look at the ingredient label
of a national brand of mayonnaise. Actually, it's the same label
across several national brands:
SOYBEAN OIL, WATER, WHOLE EGGS AND EGG
YOLKS, VINEGAR, SALT, SUGAR, LEMON JUICE, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA (USED
TO PROTECT QUALITY), NATURAL FLAVORS.
Now, according to 21CFR101.22 of the
Code of Federal Regulations, “natural flavors” are defined as:
“the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein
hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or
enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a
spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible
yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat,
seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products
thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than
nutritional”.
My. Doesn't that just sound “natural?”
Then there's calcium disodium EDTA, the
full scientific name of which is calcium disodium ethylene diamine
tetraacetate. See why they abbreviate it? Calcium disodium EDTA is
used to inhibit rancidity in salad dressings, mayonnaise, sauces, and
sandwich spreads. Considering it's made from formaldehyde, sodium
cyanide, and Ethylenediamine, it does a pretty bang-up job of
“inhibiting.”
According to the fine folks at the FDA,
providing the best protection special interest money can buy since
about 1927, calcium disodium EDTA is on the GRAS (Generally Regarded
As Safe) list when used in the small amounts found in prescription
medicine, eye drops and food preservatives. However, there is a risk
that the stuff can cause cramps, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,
headaches, low blood pressure, skin problems, and fever. It is not
safe to consume more than three grams per day. Too much can cause
kidney damage, low calcium levels and even death. Guess it's a good
thing I don't eat more mayonnaise.
But you know what? Even if you want to
write me off as a health nut, there's one thing that can't be denied:
homemade mayonnaise just tastes better than store bought.
As I mentioned, there are a lot of
flavors you can add to mayonnaise made from scratch. Once you get the
hang of it, experiment away. But what follows here is a really
simple, really basic, really easy to make recipe for homemade
mayonnaise.
Here's what you'll need:
2 eggs
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 ½ cups canola or olive oil
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper
About the eggs: use the freshest eggs
you can get your hands on. Mine are farm fresh, but if you haven't
got a farmer handy, don't use the eggs you bought at the supermarket
three weeks ago. Go get some fresh(er) ones. Why? Glad you asked.
Eggs contain lecithin, a phospholipid that facilitates the emulsion
process. The older the egg, the more diminished the lecithin content,
so.......fresh eggs, please.
I should note that using olive oil will
affect the flavor profile of your mayonnaise. Not that that's a bad
thing, but there may be some dishes you don't necessarily want to
have an olive oil flavor. In that case, just use canola oil. It will
taste more like “regular” mayonnaise.
There are a couple of ways you can
proceed. If you've got great wrists, you can make mayonnaise by hand
using a big bowl and a balloon whisk. You can also use a food
processor or, if you have a ridiculously well-equipped kitchen like I
do, you can use an immersion blender. Which ever way you go, make
sure the ingredients are at room temperature. If they are too cold,
the mixture may not emulsify properly.
Okay. Warm up your wrists, here we go
with the “by hand” method.
In a large stainless steel* or
glass mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs and the mustard until they
are thoroughly combined. Add the oil in a continuous, thin stream,
whisking constantly, until the mixture starts to thicken. Whisk in
the lemon juice and keep whisking until everything is thoroughly
blended. Season with salt and pepper.
*(The reason for the emphasis here is
that aluminum or iron will make your finished product a rather
unappetizing shade of gray.)
If you prefer to let a machine do it,
here's how it goes.
Put the eggs and mustard in the work
bowl of a food processor and process for a few seconds until
everything is smooth. With the machine running, slowly add the oil
through the feeder tube in a thin, continuous stream. Do this until
the mixture is thick and completely emulsified. Add the lemon juice
through the tube and process until smooth. Season with salt and
pepper.
If you have an immersion blender (aka a
“stick blender”), the procedure is pretty much the same as the
hand mixing method, except you're letting the blender be your “hand.”
In each method, I repeated the phrase
“thin, continuous stream” when talking about adding the oil.
(Well......I think I said “continuous, thin stream” once.)
There's a reason: if you dump too much oil in too fast, your
mayonnaise will break. That's the word chefs use when they totally
screw up a sauce. And instead of having nice creamy mayonnaise,
you'll have a bowlful of watery liquid with grainy bits of fat
floating in it. You can fix it by beating up another egg yolk and
slowly whisking it into the “broken” mixture until it thickens
properly. Or you can drizzle in about a tablespoon of very hot water
and whisk until smooth. But it's easier to do it right the first
time.
A final word about storing your
delicious, fresh, homemade mayonnaise: refrigerator. But not right
away. After you finish whipping all the ingredients into emulsified
submission, leave it out on the counter for a couple of hours. Ouch!
All that screaming of the word “salmonella” is deafening. But
hear me out. The chance of your egg yolk being contaminated with
salmonella is almost infinitesimally small. On the off chance that it
was, however, sticking the newly-made mayo in the fridge would only
keep that salmonella from breeding. The cold won't actually kill it.
However, acid will. And with all that great citric acid in your mayo,
the nasties don't stand a chance. But for reasons that still have the
white coat and pocket protector crowd mumbling and scratching their
heads, acid does its best bug killing at room temperature. So leaving
the mayonnaise out for a couple of hours is actually a good idea from
an anti-bacterial standpoint. The FDA might disagree, but go back and
look at the toxins they Generally Regard As Safe and ask yourself,
“who cares?” After a couple of hours, though, it's straight to
the refrigerator for your shiny new sauce, where it will hold up
pretty well for about a week.
Of course, if the “raw egg and
salmonella” thing really terrifies you, you could always use
pasteurized eggs or (shudder) a liquid egg substitute. But I won't
stand by the flavor.
As I said, there are a lot of
variations. For instance, you can leave out the Dijon mustard. Or you
can use vinegar instead of lemon juice. You can also scale up or down
depending on how much mayo you need. Don't make a boatload unless
you're going to use it all within a few days.
Either Amelia Schlorer or Richard
Hellman have the distinction of being the first to commercially
produce mayonnaise. Hellman supposedly did it in his New York
delicatessen in 1905 while Mrs. Schlorer whipped up a batch of her
famous homemade mayo in Philadelphia in 1907. She packed twelve jelly
jars full of her sauce and sold it at a local department store. The
jars were gone within an hour and, for better or worse, the era of
commercial mayonnaise in jars was born. Both products are still on
the market, although I think Hellman's wins the higher recognition
award. But now you can bypass them both in the condiment aisle of
your supermarket and make your own. It's fast, easy, and delicious.
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