To equate home made mayonnaise a.k.a. aioli with store bought mayo is like comparing home baked fresh out of the oven bread with the store bought sandwich bread in the plastic bag at your local grocer.
I read My Life in France and was very intrigued by Julia Child’s obsession with mayonnaise. She just kept talking about and perfecting her recipes for mayonnaise to the point I wanted to give it a try too.
But… before I began I wanted to research the whole oil/ egg emulsion process. So I read up on it in On Food and Cooking and then I was nervous: “Because mayonnaise is chock-full of oil, so much so that the droplets press up against each other, its emulsion is easily damaged by extremes of cold, heat, and agitation…” I am not much into following a recipe exactly so that had me worried. And then the book went on to tell of critical things like, “the ratio of oil to water: there must be enough of the continuous phase for the growing population of oil droplets to fit into…”
If a recipe is too long, my eyes glaze over and I begin to skim it wondering where I can cut corners, omit silly details, just get the thing made.
But then I begin to think surely this is not as big a deal as all that and besides what did I have to lose? A couple eggs and a bit of oil. So, if you are like me, the recipe is in red, proceed as follows and you will be done in 5 minutes- max.
So here are the things I learned to make foolproof mayonnaise a.k.a aioli:
Ingredients should be at room temperatures (yes they should, so go do something else until they are)
You can use any kind of oil but unrefined extra virgin olive oil is more apt to separate after you’ve made the mayonnaise. I used olive oil and it worked fine!
When the recipe says add the oil slowly they mean it, don’t dump it in and hope to speed up the process; a few extra minutes are worth the success.
The recipe: Do you promise to follow the directions?? Promise!? OK, then proceed as follows:
1/2 t dry mustard 1 whole egg plus 1 egg yolk
2 T lemon juice 3 cloves garlic- small is good or just 1 large clove
1/2 t salt 1 C olive oil
All at room temperature. Put the mustard, whole egg and yolk, lemon juice, garlic (whole cloves) and salt and 1/4 C of olive oil in food processor with metal blade so the garlic gets chopped to bits. Process for 30 seconds. Then with the food processor running slowly, slowly, in a thin steady stream pour in the remaining 3/4 cup of oil. Watch it and when it emulsifies (thickens up) stop. The end. That’s it. Now go give it a whirl!
Now, if any of you make this and use a blender instead of a food processor, I would love for you to give any instructions in the comments. I am assuming it would be the same.
This mayonnaise was so good I ate spoonfuls of it before dinner and then slathered it all over our French bread sliced lengthwise and stuck sliced deli ham on one half of the bread and jarlsberg cheese on the other half, then broiled the sandwich. Delicious!
Hoorah! You have finally given me the excuse I need to purchase a food processor. I have a food chopper (holds a little over 1 C.) that I have used for the last 20 years, and have not been able to rationalize getting a food processor, but now you have provided me with an excuse.
I made another of Julia’s recipes yesterday- today. Her salted spice and herb marinade for pork. It ended up being the best pork I think I’ve ever made/eaten. I’ll have to send you the recipe.
Terri…I haven’t had homemade mayo in years…..but I do remember that its heavenly and doesn’t even resemble Hellman’s but…….what about the raw egg issue….is that really not as big a deal as some have suggested?? If Julia and Barefoot Contessa don’t care……why should I, I guess.
Homemade mayo really is heavenly!
Yes, raw eggs… well,
Irradiating them would erase all bacteria. My dad’s life work was dealing with that:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ba-1967-0065.ch014
And salmonella won’t grow in a highly acidic environment so the lemon juice helps.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/icooks/08-25-03.html
consider this:
Unless you live in an area where there has been an outbreak of salmonella in eggs, the American Egg Board estimates the likelihood of an egg containing salmonella is approximately five one-thousandths of one percent. At this rate they suggest, if you’re an average consumer, you might encounter a contaminated egg once every 84 years!
Hmmm, I’m not 84 yet, so I must be safe to make this.
Do they say you can use a blender? How about a really crappy blender? I’ll have to let you know how that works out.
I think a blender will work really well, you just might want to nix the garlic if it is a really bad blender,and then you don’t need to have any large garlic pieces purée.
This is really great for dipping fresh vegetables and we drizzled it on cooked green beans too.
Garlic chunky mayo sounds awesome!
Apparently you passed that on to me– I refuse to make recipes the way they state unless they have come up with the most stream-lined way of getting from start to finish. It’s a waste of time otherwise!
Caitlin – I use my no-frills blender for making mayo and it works great. To make sure I add my oil slowly enough I force myself to do it DROP by DROP (painful, I know, but not as painful as a ruined batch, which I learned the hard way.)
I tried it.
It’s hard not to eat it by the spoonful. All I had in the fridge was some chickpeas Adding mayo to that made some amazing hummus; smeared it all over some oatmeal bread and topped it with the only piece of green in my fridge, romaine; and wasn’t happy with one piece, and ate until I ran out of hummus and bread. In short, its amazing. Funny too, seeing as I got the recipe from Julia Child as well.
Yay for you, Ken! It is almost like a food and not a condiment. This reminds me I need to make it again… right now!!