I don’t think I’ll ever buy mayonnaise again. The original recipe came from Mark Bittmann’s nifty How to Cook Everything app on my iPod touch, and it pretty much convinced me of that. It’s really easy to modify this recipe to get exotic — lots of ideas in the app for that, too.
It’s not a wholesale cut-n-paste of his recipe; we’ve found that we need lots less oil than he calls for. Here’s our base recipe; look for variations in the comments.
1 egg yolk
2 tsp mustard (honey mustard is nice for a little sweetness)
100 ml neutral oil (extra virgin olive oil would be OK too)
Salt / pepper to taste
1 tbsp acid, like sherry vinegar, white wine vinegar, or lemon juice
Sarah picked up a tall cylindrical melamine beaker/pitcher thing with rubberized feet at a nearby department store for a few Euro, and it’s perfect for making mayo with our stick blender’s whisk attachment. You can use a normal-shaped bowl too (we’ve done it, it works), but this beakery pitcher thing seems to make the process more efficient.
Combine the yolk and mustard with the whisk. Slowly drizzle in the oil in a thin stream until it thickens while you’re whipping, and it’s done when the the stuff looks like mayonnaise. Then thoroughly combine in the flavors and acids, and you’re done.
We like that this recipe makes about a cup of final product; perfect for the two of us with left-over chicken/turkey/whatever to turn into a couple days’ worth of sandwiches.
Sriracha Mayo
Note well: don’t taste the Sriracha straight while you’re preparing this recipe; you’ll never think the mayo is quite hot enough while fine-tuning and you could overdo it quite easily. 3 tsp is a nice mild heat; any more than that though, and you’ll mess up the consistency (it’ll be more of a sauce than a mayo texture).
Chipotle Mayo
The rule about not tasting the straight chipotle applies here, too.