If you’re following a Paleo lifestyle, you know that one of the most important facets is making your own condiments and ingredients at home. From “set it and forget it” items like chicken stock, to items that are recipes in their own right like BBQ sauce, this is one of those things that is tough at first, yet rewarding in the long run.
Mayonnaise is a basic ingredient that forms the base for a whole family of dips, condiments and sauces. If you’re like me, and you’re partial to tuna, egg or chicken salad (all great Paleo lunches, especially with almond crackers!), knowing how to make your own mayo is a must.
A Simple Recipe
Mayonnaise is not a complicated thing. It’s essentially just oil, beaten into egg yolks that have reached stiff peaks. That’s not a scientifically accurate explanation, but it’s close enough. Add some salt and acidic ingredients like lemon juice and vinegar, and some mustard as an emulsifier, and you’re off to the races!
The recipe couldn’t be easier:
1 cup neutral-flavored oil (like grapeseed)
2 egg yolks
1 tsp mustard
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tsp lemon juice (or more, to taste)
1 tsp salt (or more, to taste)
Directions: Beat the egg yolks, vinegar, lemon, salt and mustard together until smooth. Add oil a few drops at a time, until it reaches a creamy consistency. Then add the oil slightly faster until it is all incorporated.
There are a few variations on this idea, some including white pepper, others favoring one of the acids over the other (you can adjust the vinegar and lemon juice you suit your taste), but this is the essential ratio. The problem is, all the recipes you’ll find talk about the process of making the mayo like it’s the easiest thing in the world. And it is, if you have some practice.
The Awful Truth
Fact of the matter is, you’re probably going to screw it up your first time, (I sure did!) and end up with a broken sauce. Broken mayo is awful to look at; it looks like scrambled eggs in a bath of oil. It’s disgusting.
Your first time out, you’re probably going to add too much oil, or add it too quickly, or not beat it fast enough, or use the wrong equipment. All of these factors come into play while building the delicate, balanced emulsion that is mayo.
My First Attempts
The first time I tried making mayo, I read about half a dozen different recipes online, and picked out what I thought were the essentials. I thought the part about adding the oil slowly was BS, so I just tossed everything together and went for it. What a fool I was.
What I ended up with looked like an industrial mishap at the oil factory. It tasted…okay, but it was barely even usable as a salad dressing. Way too fatty. So I had to toss it.
The second attempt, I followed the directions and let the oil drip in slowly. It was a painful process, standing there with my squeeze bottle, sending a single droplet at a time into the whirring food processor. Eventually, it did start to come together. According to everything I read, once your mayo begins to emulsify, you can start adding the oil faster. So I did. And I added too much. BOOM! The mayo broke again. Now I was down 4 eggs and 2 cups of oil.
How to Save Broken Mayo
I didn’t want to use up the rest of my grapeseed oil (that stuff is cheap, but it’s not that cheap!), and I was quickly running out of eggs. So I looked online, and apparently, you can save a broken mayo by pouring the broken sauce back into your measuring cup or whatever you were using to drip it in, add a new egg yolk to a clean bowl, and start over, using the broken sauce in place of the oil.
I tried this. It flat-out didn’t work.
The Solution
It turned out that my main problem was I had the wrong equipment. I was trying to do this in a food processor, which is excellent for blending things together, but mayo isn’t just a blend, it’s an emulsion. The eggs won’t cooperate with the emulsification process unless you’re whipping some air into them. Any of you out there who have ever made a meringue know this.
So I ditched the food processor and went for the hand-mixer. Voila! I had perfect, fluffy, delicious mayo within minutes! After a few more tries, I found that if I beat the eggs on a high enough speed, I could even add the oil much faster than I originally was. This meant that making mayo was no longer a laborious, big-batch, make-ahead chore, but something I could do on the fly, whenever I needed some! That saved me ingredients, and it saved me money. And once I mastered the art of emulsifying things with eggs, I found you can use the same technique to make all sorts of things, from fresh Hollandaise to scratch-made Caesar dressing!
It’s all about the right equipment, and with a little practice, you too can master this essential, basic sauce!
The post Homemade Mayonnaise, a Tale of Frustration appeared first on .
