Servings: 32 Prep: 10 min Cook: 0 min Total: 10 min
Mayonnaise is about as ubiquitous a sauce as there is. It’s in almost all sandwiches and is used as the base for MANY salad dressings. It’s what holds egg, chicken and tuna salad together. In many ways, mayonnaise is what makes the world go round.
Mayonnaise is probably a “Mother Sauce”, but it might be a “Sister Sauce”. That doesn’t mean it’s made by someone’s mother, or FOR someone’s sister (although it could be!). Or, perhaps it’s a “Cousin Sauce” … the uncooked 1st cousin of a Hollandaise (which IS a true “Mother Sauce”). All this means is … it’s the base for a myriad of other sauces. With it, you can add a few ingredients and get a totally different sauce. Add garlic to mayonnaise and you have Aioli! Add some cucumbers, a little diced egg, some onions and capers and … voila! Tartar Sauce!
Mayonnaise is an emulsion. An emulsion is a mixture of two different liquids, mixed together, that ordinarily shouldn’t be mixed together. This is a fancy way of saying “oil and water blended together”.
Mayonnaise is awesome for a low carb way of eating. It’s got virtually no carbs and has a lot of good fats. I’m showing the recipe for how to make it, because it’s not that hard, it lasts a while in the fridge and the store bought mayonnaises often have a lot of sugar added. Finally … I just think it tastes better!
Note: This can be done in a bowl, with a whisk. The process is the same, but it just takes longer and makes your arms really REALLY tired.
Makes about 32 one-tablespoon servings.
Ingredients
- 1 large whole egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 tsp dijon mustard
- 2 tbsp lemon juice freshly squeezed
- 1 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 tbsp 'Swerve' or other sugar replacement (optional)
- water (to adjust consistency)
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- In a food processor or blender, add your eggs, Dijon, lemon juice and a dash of salt. Turn it on the slowest setting.
- SLOWLY (painstakingly slowly, to begin with ... literally one drop at a time), pour the olive in, in a slow, thin stream, into the food processor or blender. The first 1/4 cup of oil should literally be one drop at a time. Once that's incorporated and the emulsion has officially formed, you can pour in a somewhat faster, although still ... very thin ... stream of oil.
- Continue to drizzle the oil, until about 1/3 of it has been used. Open the processor and add your sugar equivalent, if you want to make a slightly sweet mayonnaise (think ... Miracle Whip). Also check the consistency. If it's getting too thick, you can add 1/2 tsp of water.
- Return the lid and continue to drizzle the oil into the mayonnaise. As you add the oil, the mayonnaise will thicken. If it gets too thick, stop the processor and add another 1/2 tsp of water. Repeat this process until all the oil has been added.
- Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
- Transfer into an airtight container. Homemade mayonnaise will last in the fridge for about 2 weeks.
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* Learn More: More about this recipe and nutrition …
Have you tried making your mayo with an immersion blender? So much easier.
I put all the ingredients in a wide mouth jar or beaker and blend, high speed. Takes less than 30 seconds
for the mayo to emulsify.
Awesome!
Hi Linda. I haven’t! I’ve seen videos and am impressed by it. It clearly works! I just don’t own one of those blenders … :/
I tried an olive oil recipe pretty much the same as this and mine tasted kind of bitter. Is that normal? I’m going to try again with macadamia nut oil and see if I like that better.
Hi Karla, based on the fact that you’ve got some macadamia nut oil lying around, I’m going to guess you’ve got actual real olive oil and not the fake olive oil in most grocery stores. REAL olive oil tends to be somewhat bitter and occasionally very slightly "spicy" for lack of a better term. Being that mayo is almost all pure oil, those notes really come out. All this said, I’m just shooting in the dark. I have no idea which kind of oil you used or what all else was involved in the process. Ultimately, because it’s mostly oil, find a room temperature stable fat that you enjoy and use it. It’ll work! I hope this helps! 🙂
Thank you. I had used extra light olive oil. Maybe I just need to cut back a little, it seemed kind of oily when it was done. I will keep trying. 🙂 I haven’t tried macadamia yet, thinking it might be a little too nutty. I really would like a more Miracle Whipe type of dressing anyway, so maybe when sweetened it won’t be as bitter also.
OK, I was inspired to go try again. I used a little less oil and sweetened and seasoned to make a Miracle Whip-like flavor and it’s much better! Thanks for the feedback and keep the recipes coming! Love your site! 🙂
Karla, yep! Sweetener is the way to get it more like miracle whip. Seems like you’re on a good path. Enjoy it! 🙂
Would extra virgin olive oil work or just olive oil? Sorry, so use to using the extra virgin stuff, I like to make sure when recipes call for olive oil, they don’t mean extra virgin. 🙂
Hi Brande, any room-temperature stable fat will work. Extra-virgin would definitely work and taste quite nice, as long as it’s a flavor you appreciate. I hope this helps!
So I attempted the extra virgin olive oil and mine definitely came out bitter. Sadly, my food processor has broken and I had to use an old blender (didn’t realize the food processor was broken until I had stuff in it for the mayo) that doesn’t have a slow setting and tends to heat up the longer I use it. Do you think the heating of the oil would have caused the very bitter taste?
Brande, no. In order for the heat to impact the flavor, the heat would need to be well over 200 degrees … probably even high into the 300 degree neighborhood. Ultimately, I can’t account for the bitter taste that some of you are picking up. It comes down to the oil you’re using. Some olive oils are sweet and fruity and others (the true first press extra virgins) are often spicy and somewhat bitter. Being that it’s a sauce made from almost pure oil, the oil itself needs to have a pleasant taste … straight from the bottle. Any salt, sweet or acid that is added to the mayo is only going to make whatever flavors in the oil taste that much stronger.
What oil brand do you use?
Hi Brande, <a href="http://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-your-olive-oil-really-olive-oil/" target="_blank">try giving this a read</a>. I vary on different brands as I try new things. I just checked the bottle I’m currently working on and it’s "Coltibuono". I hope this helps! 🙂
Thank you! I’ve been scouring the interwebs for a good mayo recipe with proper instructions. I should have known DJ Foodie would be on top of it, thanks!
How did it turn out, Celesta? About like you’d hoped?!
If you have a stick blender, you can put everything in a jar and insert the blender and when you turn it on, it magically turns to mayo! No painstaking dribbling of oil!
Unknown, that’s true! At least … I’ve seen videos of it. I’ve never tried it. At the very least, it’s good information … your way, or the traditional way. I see it a bit like having a calculator. Having one is good, but it’s also good to know how to do long division. Some of the time, the calculator breaks! 😉
Hey DJ, I found and tried the immersion blender version a few years ago and it changed my life O_O that’s not even hyperbole, I haven’t bought store bought mayo since as I always have the ingredients in the house anyway; dump in a jar, blend for 30 seconds ..et voila! But, as you mention above in a comment, it is good to have the basics known in case I should ever need em (though I don’t own a food processor so if my stick blender dies, the tired-arm method it is… very good for the bingo wings though 😉 ) all the best, as ever, from this far-flung bacon-bit!