Sunday, September 9, 2012

Success!

I've accomplished something today that I've been scared to do/try for quite some time now. I made... MAYO!

Now, this may not seem like anything extraordinary to you folks out there, but it is to me. I've been meaning to try making it for a long, long time (mostly at Justin's urgings). The whole idea of creating this basic emulsion was more terrifying to me than making a cheesecake. More fear inducing than replicating my Mom's pumpkin pie, through the traditional method of cooking down a pumpkin and making a perfectly flaky pie crust from scratch (which, let's face it, is HARD)!

Despite all of this, I decided that today was the day to conquer the recipe from my nightmare... and I succeeded!
(Cue the heavenly choir music!)

I used a recipe that I recently found on the Everyday Paleo website: http://everydaypaleo.com/2011/06/20/homemade-paleo-mayo-cooking-demo/. The nice thing about this particular post is that it includes a video!


Ingredients:
2 eggs

2 cups light tasting olive oil or walnut oil

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon yellow mustard

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/3 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Method:
In a blender, add the eggs, vinegar, and mustard and blend together well – leave the blender running and slowly slowly slowly drop by drop or very slow drizzle add the oil. BE PATIENT!! Do not dump all the oil in quickly and give up!! When the mixture begins to emulsify or thicken, only then can you be a bit faster about pouring in the olive oil but still take your time. Turn the blender off once all the olive oil is in and the mayonnaise is thickened to your desired consistency. Add the salt and cayenne pepper and mix well or blend again for another few seconds.

I ended up cutting this recipe in half, and it still came out great!

I think one of the keys to making the mayo stay together is having the egg be at room temperature before you start. After scouring websites for hints before giving this a whirl, it was the one thing that people consistently said was necessary. The other key is PATIENCE!! I'll admit that I was scared when I didn't see my mayo coming together at first... but then I started to hear the mixture getting thicker and realized that I was on the right track. Slow and steady with the olive oil and you'll win the mayo race!

Now that I've conquered mayo, a whole slew of new sauces can be made: Russian dressing, ranch, chipotle dip... oh the possibilities!

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