mayonnaise trials

I've been making my own mayo lately. I was annoyed that even varieties advertising "olive oil" were still mostly soybean oil. Homemade is really excellent. I've found that a food processor works best. An actual blender can work, but often doesn't. I use really light olive oil for now, leaving the really good stuff because (a) it imparts and incredibly strong flavor to mayo and (2) if the emulsion doesn't hold it breaks my heart to have used stuff that costs me upwards of £13 or £14/litre. But now that I'm reliably turning out the goods I will start adding the quality olive oil back in.

At the moment, I prefer not using mustard. I like the lemon juice, though, and white wine vinegar. My basic may is 3 egg yolks, pinch of salt, about a tablespoon of vinegar, and juice of at least one lemon. Then the oil. I haven't yet experimented with putting everything at once. Supposedly if you don't pour the oil in a very light-handed stream, a singularity will form, imploding the earth into your kitchen and extinguishing all life on the planet. But I'm curious to test this now.

I recently made Fergus Henderson's Aioli recipe (which, he rightly points out, is not garlic mayo), and it nearly killed me. 2 egg yolks, 20 cloves of garlic, salt, vinegar, lemon, olive oil. Yes, twenty. I ended up with a ramekin full that was enough to serve approximately 50 garlic-loving guests. It was really good, but next time I think I will just try a more modest garlicking of my mayo.

In any case, I recommend giving it a go. It's tastier and healthier than the industrial seed oil versions on the shelves. And in the future, it will be illegal to eat raw eggs, so enjoy it while it lasts.