Gary,

I am *sooo* with you on that. Here at the Lake I'm 20 mins from a market, but this morning I trekked out there bcz we ran out of Hellman's... and it ain't like I don't have a dozen eggs and a whole bunch of excellent EVOO.

Geo

I ran out of Hellman's yesterday. Got a call from a friend inviting us to dinner and decided I wanted to bring along a Waldorf salad. So I made some mayo. This recipe yielded something that was pretty close to Hellman's.

Food processor mayonnaise

1 extra-large egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1-1/3 cups canola oil

Combine the egg, salt, pepper, vinegar and mustard in a food processor and process till combined. With the machine running, drizzle in the oil very slowly in a thin, steady stream.

It took 5 minutes and made about 2 cups worth. I don't know if I'll bother to put mayo on the shopping list.

I've never really tracked the age of homemade mayo. I've kept it until I didn't like the look of it around the edge or rim of the jar any more. Not that I took this to be a scientific judgment. Just a fairly arbitrary cut-off point. Have probably had batches in the fridge for at least 3 weeks and never suffered any repercussions.

Has anyone tried making mayo without mustard? Will it emulsify?

LAZ wrote:Has anyone tried making mayo without mustard? Will it emulsify?

Made it today at work. Yes and yes.

LAZ wrote:Has anyone tried making mayo without mustard? Will it emulsify?

Evil Ronnie wrote:Made it today at work. Yes and yes.

Thanks, Ronnie!

I cannot imagine why I bought commercial mayonnaise for so many years. In the food processor, homemade mayo is a 5-minute process, uses things I always have on hand, costs less than the jarred kind and tastes better. (I still do buy Miracle Whip for the things I like it better on; boiled dressing is not a 5-minute process.)

Tim wrote:The easiest way to make mayonnaise is to use Kenji Alt's "Two Minute Mayonnaise recipe from Serious Eats. link!

All ingredients go into an immersion blender cup. Wait 15 seconds till they separate. Place blender in bottom and turn on. Slowly lift until oil is emulsified. Season.

Yes, it works every time.

Tim

Thanks to mbh, I now have an immersion blender. A friend from my home town is visiting & I invited her over to break bread. I didn't make dinner last night + the weather is dreadful so I figured we would have toasted cheese on homemade brioche with homemade tomato soup. Well then I decided we should have fries with that and fries require mayonnaise. I was all out of the last batch and this 2-minute mayo was done so quickly I kept checking and double checking that it was really mixed just that quickly. I think the mixing is a mere few seconds.

I'm following the advice up thread and leaving the mayo out for a minimum of 4 hours before serving and storing it.

Like everyone else here, why on earth did I ever buy mayonnaise? Oh & I was out of my neutral grapeseed oil and only had peanut oil and EVOO. The peanut oil worked just fine.

pairs4life wrote:Thanks to mbh, I now have an immersion blender.

Delighted to know my baby went to a good home.

I tried to make Aioli over the weekend using this Lebovitz recipe, and it came out all wrong - it broke before I got halfway through the olive oil.

After doing some research online, it looks like the proportions are all wrong - he's got one cup of oil for each yolk and no other emulsifiers, where almost every other recipe calls for two yolks per cup of oil, sometimes with mustard added.

I made a second batch without measurements - I just stopped adding oil when it felt right - and my eyeball test told me I used just about 1/2 cup of oil for my lone egg yolk. Can anyone else confirm? Has anyone ever hand-made an aioli with 1 cup of oil per egg yolk? I have Lebovitz' ice cream book, which is phenomenal, so I'd be somewhat bothered if his online recipe is that wrong.

Of course, before it broke, the emulsion was also so thick I could barely work the fork, so maybe I'm the one doing something completely wrong.

Independent George wrote:I tried to make Aioli over the weekend using this Lebovitz recipe, and it came out all wrong - it broke before I got halfway through the olive oil.

After doing some research online, it looks like the proportions are all wrong - he's got one cup of oil for each yolk and no other emulsifiers, where almost every other recipe calls for two yolks per cup of oil, sometimes with mustard added.

I made a second batch without measurements - I just stopped adding oil when it felt right - and my eyeball test told me I used just about 1/2 cup of oil for my lone egg yolk. Can anyone else confirm? Has anyone ever hand-made an aioli with 1 cup of oil per egg yolk? I have Lebovitz' ice cream book, which is phenomenal, so I'd be somewhat bothered if his online recipe is that wrong.

Of course, before it broke, the emulsion was also so thick I could barely work the fork, so maybe I'm the one doing something completely wrong.

I don't think your technique is wrong, I think it's the recipe.

The aioli recipe I use calls for 2 egg yolks and 3/4 c. olive oil. I've never tried to make it with any other proportions. This base also calls for 1 Tbls. plus 1 tsp. lemon juice, 1/8 teaspoon sugar, 1/4 teaspoon table salt and white pepper to taste. (Source: Cook's Illustrated) If you want to make garlic aioli, add one minced clove to the above.

sdbond wrote:I don't think your technique is wrong, I think it's the recipe.

The aioli recipe I use calls for 2 egg yolks and 3/4 c. olive oil. I've never tried to make it with any other proportions. This base also calls for 1 Tbls. plus 1 tsp. lemon juice, 1/8 teaspoon sugar, 1/4 teaspoon table salt and white pepper to taste. (Source: Cook's Illustrated) If you want to make garlic aioli, add one minced clove to the above.

Thanks - I made another batch this past weekend before I saw your post, and wound up mostly replicating your recipe through trial and error. First, I microplaned 2 cloves of garlic into a small bowl, and then added some salt & white pepper to help mash them even finer. After about 1/2 cup of oil, the emuslion was so thick that I was having trouble beating it, so I added some lemon juice (about 1/4 of a lemon's worth). Once it loosened, I continued to alternate adding oil and lemon, and ended up using about 4/5 of a cup of oil in total, and a little less than a 1/2 lemon's worth of juice (I didn't measure that out).

The aioli was delicious, but it ended up breaking after refrigeration. I looked it up in McGee's 'Food and Cooking', and it turned out the solution is to use a cheap refined oil for the bulk of the aioli, and use smaller amounts of the good extra-virgin stuff for flavoring at the end. Apparently, the good stuff is more likely to break after a few hours - traditionally, aioli is made fresh in small batches and not meant for long-term storage. I'll have to experiment to see what ratio I like.

Looks like I'm trying out another batch this weekend.

Come to think of it, I've never tried to save aioli -- I've always made it the day I needed it, and used it up. Let us know how your next experiment goes!

Rulman also goes by the one yolk-one cup of oil formula. He stresses that you need enough liquid (water/lemon juice) to hold the emulsion.

I've got photos along with the methods & results of my aioli experiments over the weekend, and produced the following base recipe:

1 egg yolk
3-6g garlic (1-2 medium cloves)*
160 mL oil**
1 tsp lemon juice

*I originally had 7-9g, or 2-3 medium cloves; this was way, way too much garlic. I tasted immediately after adding it, and it actually takes a while for the garlic flavor to come through. 1 clove is plenty.
** Extra-Virgin Olive Oil gives you the most flavor, but it's not stable; after a few hours, it will start to break. That's fine if you intend to consume it all immediately, but if you plan on storing/refrigerating it, then you need a mixture of refined oil and EVOO. Thus far, I've tested a 50-50 mix with some success; I'll update this post as I try other ratios.

My first step was to figure out just how much garlic is in a clove.

The largest clove in the bulb was 10g; the smallest ones from the interior are 1g or less. The medium cloves were typically in the 3-4g range. I've read that smaller cloves are more intensely flavored than large ones, so the garlic power is the same, but that doesn't mesh with my experience. However, I have noticed that fresh garlic from the farmer's market is considerably smaller and more powerful than the supermarket varieties, so maybe that's where the idea came from. From the same bulb, though, there doesn't seem to be any difference in strength between individual cloves. Regardless, that will have to wait for a future experiment.

After adding about 50 mL of oil, I had a stable emulsion:


But it started to loosen up around 100 mL, so that's when I added 3/4 teaspoon of lemon juice:


At about 150 mL, it was loosening again, so I added another 1/4 teaspoon of lemon.


It started to loosen again at 160 mL; clearly, I was reaching diminishing returns. Another 1/4 teaspoon of lemon, plus a few drops of oil, and it thickened and stabilized again nicely. I'd have been satisfied stopping here, but SCIENCE! demanded more oil.


Clearly, that was too much; more lemon juice did not help. It took 180 mL of oil to get to the point shown in the photo, but it really started to break at 170 mL. I added more lemon at 170, but it no longer helped. I concluded 160 mL was about the most I could emulsify with 1 egg yolk.

I used refined oil only on my first batch; no sense wasting the good stuff on an emulsion I'm trying to break. I made a 50-50 mixture of oils on my second batch (80mL refined oil, 80mL EVOO), left it out for a few hours, and then put it in the fridge; one day later, it's still stable. The flavor is noticeably better than the 100% refined batch (even before it broke). I'll try the 25% refined/75% EVOO mixture next weekend.

I also tested out how much garlic to add. Using a bulb of garlic from Whole Foods, 1 medium clove (3g) was too little, but it took a second clove (4g) to really give it a decent flavor.

I microplaned a third clove (4g), and added it piecemeal to see how the flavor changed. Around 8g seemed to match the aioli I've had in restaurants, but I actually prefer a little more punch myself, and went with 10g. I thought anything more was overpowering, but your mileage may vary.
ETA: As noted in the posts below, it takes at least an hour for the garlic flavor to permeate the aioli; when I tried it again a day later, that second clove (followed by the third) was way, way too much garlic.

One caveat: as is obvious from the photos, I have neither a mortar & pestle, nor a food processor, so I prepared this with a fork and a bowl. The rough surface of on the mortar and pestle may create better agitation, and a food processor definitely generates more RPMs than I ever could have, so the emulsion might be more stable using those methods (or by someone more experienced than I am at drizzling oil in one hand while beating a fork with the other). For my own level of cookery, though, I won't try anything above 160mL oil per egg. Which suits me fine, because I like that egginess behind the garlic.

George - in my experience, minced garlic takes a bit of time to "bloom": Your second clove may just be the timing on the first, and an hour later the two together could get to be overpowering.

Microplaning garlic can result in the most intense garlic flavor of any method of use: you're opening up a significant number of cells, more than you would through knife mincing or mashing through a press.

JoelF wrote:George - in my experience, minced garlic takes a bit of time to "bloom": Your second clove may just be the timing on the first, and an hour later the two together could get to be overpowering.

Microplaning garlic can result in the most intense garlic flavor of any method of use: you're opening up a significant number of cells, more than you would through knife mincing or mashing through a press.

Rut-roh.

I tasted immediately after adding the 2nd (and 3rd) clove of garlic, but not after letting it sit. I've got a bad feeling about what's waiting for me tonight.

ETA: And, Joel was right; the garlic was much, much more intense tonight than it was when I tasted yesterday. Until I try again this weekend, I'm going to estimate 1 medium clove (3-4g) per egg yolk. Ouch.

George,

Two thoughts came to mind from your post about your experiments:

1) I love your food-geekery approach! In a similar vein, I recently bought a digital scale, and now am pretty much cuckoo for measuring, as I've found it really helpful.

2) Do you enjoy spending the time necessary to create the emulsion by hand? When I have added the right tool to various tasks I used to do the hard way, I have generally found the dollar investment worthwhile. Perhaps a stick (immersion) blender would be a budget- and space-friendly option? Mine gets a lot of use.

Looking forward to the photos and further reports!

sdbond wrote:1) I love your food-geekery approach! In a similar vein, I recently bought a digital scale, and now am pretty much cuckoo for measuring, as I've found it really helpful.

2) Do you enjoy spending the time necessary to create the emulsion by hand? When I have added the right tool to various tasks I used to do the hard way, I have generally found the dollar investment worthwhile. Perhaps a stick (immersion) blender would be a budget- and space-friendly option? Mine gets a lot of use.

1. I know, right? I bought mine ages ago, thinking I was going to learn how to bake. I didn't. So it sat in my shelf for a long while, before I figured out it was an easy and accurate way to measure pasta portions. And then I started using it to measure portions when butchering & freezing meat. And now, I find myself measuring everything. All those recipes I couldn't do consistently? Put it on the scale!

2. Oddly enough, I did enjoy making it by hand, though that wasn't my initial purpose. I'd read elsewhere that hand-making it produced a better texture than by machine, and the comments above about not using a blender for EVOO just sealed it for me. There was a very noticeable difference in flavor between the 100% refined and the 50/50 batch. I'm willing to make some tradeoff between stability and flavor, but not being able to use EVOO at all is a dealbreaker for me.

Once I started making it, though, it's actually pretty damned cool watching and feeling the emulsion form. You can also feel when the emulsion is about to break - during my first test run, I could immediately sense when it reached the limits on how much oil it could hold, and it was confirmed during testing. Whenever I continued to add after feeling the change, it broke almost immediately. This is less of an issue once you have the portions in the base recipe down, but I like having that immediate feedback during preparation. Maybe I'll get bored with it later, but making mayo by hand is pretty damned cool.

I probably will get an immersion blender later on for other reasons, but I currently don't have enough reason to justify the purchase. I've already got a blender, a food mill, and a stand mixer (which is actually under-used), which covers all of my current needs.

Just a note on stick blenders: I've been able to get successful emulsions even without egg -- especially with EVOO if I'm refrigerating afterward... but there's got to be a fairly large amount of other "stuff": A homemade "orange French" dressing containing mustard, tomato paste and horseradish is pretty darn stable, needing only a little bit of whisking to go back to emulsion/suspension status a couple days later.

One more data point to add - I finished off the last of my overpowered aioli with some tater tots last night, and noticed that the garlic flavor wasn't just stronger, but actually different. Smoother, sweeter, and more aromatic.

I didn't really think about it until now, but on my initial tasting, the garlic wasn't just subdued (necessitating the additional cloves), but also sharper and more bitter. The bread I ate it with masked some of that, but it was very, very pronounced when I tasted the aioli by itself. Overnight in the fridge, though, the garlic was not only stronger, but smoother, sweeter, and tastier. It had the usual garlic flavor I was expecting, and not just the pungency. I don't know if I'm describing it properly, but all in all, it just tasted better later on.

Has anyone else experienced this? I saw Alton Brown's recommendation of letting mayo sit at room temperature for a few hours so that the acid in the lemon can kill the bacteria - but that seems to be good advice for the aioli I made, too. The flavor of the garlic changed dramatically for the better as time went on.

Independent George wrote:Oddly enough, I did enjoy making it by hand, though that wasn't my initial purpose. I'd read elsewhere that hand-making it produced a better texture than by machine, and the comments above about not using a blender for EVOO just sealed it for me. There was a very noticeable difference in flavor between the 100% refined and the 50/50 batch. I'm willing to make some tradeoff between stability and flavor, but not being able to use EVOO at all is a dealbreaker for me.

Once I started making it, though, it's actually pretty damned cool watching and feeling the emulsion form. You can also feel when the emulsion is about to break - during my first test run, I could immediately sense when it reached the limits on how much oil it could hold, and it was confirmed during testing. Whenever I continued to add after feeling the change, it broke almost immediately. This is less of an issue once you have the portions in the base recipe down, but I like having that immediate feedback during preparation. Maybe I'll get bored with it later, but making mayo by hand is pretty damned cool.

I probably will get an immersion blender later on for other reasons, but I currently don't have enough reason to justify the purchase. I've already got a blender, a food mill, and a stand mixer (which is actually under-used), which covers all of my current needs.

You might find it easier and get better results mixing by hand if you use a whisk instead of a fork. That will beat more air into the emulsion.

If you get tired of mixing by hand, you can make mayo in a regular blender. That's what I did with the recipe that started this thread. I used all EVOO, and I detected no bitterness, it just tasted too olive-y for the purpose I wanted it for. (However, I did not have a supertaster handy to sample it, so I don't know whether somebody very sensitive to bitter flavors might taste them where I did not.)

The main difference between blender recipes and most hand-mix recipes is that you use a whole egg instead of just a yolk. That makes the whole process even faster and easier.

Tim wrote:The easiest way to make mayonnaise is to use Kenji Alt's "Two Minute Mayonnaise recipe from Serious Eats. link!

Leftover black sea bass, good bread/toast, ok tomatoes, red onion no mayo. Wanted a fish sandwich, wanted it with mayo, no if ands or buts. Two Minute Mayo with the microplane garlic clove option, pretty much perfect, at least for my late evening fish sandwich.

As an aside, I've become quite the fan of Mr. Alt, simple precise techniques and recipes that both appeal and work.

G Wiv wrote:

Tim wrote:The easiest way to make mayonnaise is to use Kenji Alt's "Two Minute Mayonnaise recipe from Serious Eats. link!

Leftover black sea bass, good bread/toast, ok tomatoes, red onion no mayo. Wanted a fish sandwich, wanted it with mayo, no if ands or buts. Two Minute Mayo with the microplane garlic clove option, pretty much perfect, at least for my late evening fish sandwich.

As an aside, I've become quite the fan of Mr. Alt, simple precise techniques and recipes that both appeal and work.

Agreed. I tried Lopez-Alt's vegan mayo and while it was initially too sweet, it mellowed with time. I was deeply saddened that it is only good for 2weeks. I will make it again but with less, if any, agave.

Independent George wrote:One more data point to add - I finished off the last of my overpowered aioli with some tater tots last night, and noticed that the garlic flavor wasn't just stronger, but actually different. Smoother, sweeter, and more aromatic.

I didn't really think about it until now, but on my initial tasting, the garlic wasn't just subdued (necessitating the additional cloves), but also sharper and more bitter. The bread I ate it with masked some of that, but it was very, very pronounced when I tasted the aioli by itself. Overnight in the fridge, though, the garlic was not only stronger, but smoother, sweeter, and tastier. It had the usual garlic flavor I was expecting, and not just the pungency. I don't know if I'm describing it properly, but all in all, it just tasted better later on.

Has anyone else experienced this? I saw Alton Brown's recommendation of letting mayo sit at room temperature for a few hours so that the acid in the lemon can kill the bacteria - but that seems to be good advice for the aioli I made, too. The flavor of the garlic changed dramatically for the better as time went on.

I read an article about what happens to garlic over time, as well as the differences in taste you will get depending on if you slice it, mash it, mince it, etc., so I am not surprised to hear your report about the flavor changes. The article did say that if you were prepping ingredients in advance, garlic and onion weren't good choices -- they should be sliced, diced, whatever, closer to when they were going to be used in your recipe.

sdbond wrote:The article did say that if you were prepping ingredients in advance, garlic and onion weren't good choices -- they should be sliced, diced, whatever, closer to when they were going to be used in your recipe.

I don't know anything about how the timing of prepping garlic affects its flavor, so I'll take your word for that, but I've read in multiple places that the health (antioxidant) benefits of garlic are maximized by crushing or dicing it about 10 minutes before you consume it or cook with it.

Katie wrote:

sdbond wrote:The article did say that if you were prepping ingredients in advance, garlic and onion weren't good choices -- they should be sliced, diced, whatever, closer to when they were going to be used in your recipe.

I don't know anything about how the timing of prepping garlic affects its flavor, so I'll take your word for that, but I've read in multiple places that the health (antioxidant) benefits of garlic are maximized by crushing or dicing it about 10 minutes before you consume it or cook with it.

My response was very general because I couldn't remember the specifics, but IIRC, they had cut onion and garlic over a period of time prior to using it for cooking, and then tested the flavor from each batch. The earliest portions were harsh and very bitter in the final dish, I think. If I come across the article again, I'll post more detail.

In Belgium, Mayonnaise Makers Want a New Recipe

http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-belgium- ... 1442787350