Food|Mayonnaise: Oil, Egg and a Drop of Magic
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Making Mayo by Hand
For a good workout and a great emulsion, try making mayonnaise by hand with a whisk. Melissa Clark demonstrates.
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“DON’T you know the mayonnaise trick?”
My friend Dori and I were standing in front of Empire Mayonnaise in Brooklyn, the city’s first and only artisanal mayonnaise shop, ogling its wares: flavors like lime pickle and, of course, bacon, when she asked me that.
If there was a trick for making mayonnaise, I certainly did not know it. And what a trick — a potential game-changer, the kind that turns homemade mayo from a special-occasion recipe into an everyday endeavor, ending our dependence on subpar, corn-syrup-filled commercial stuff.
Because here’s the thing about mayo: while it’s easy to buy high-end mustard and ketchup, good-quality commercial mayonnaise is a rare thing indeed. If you want really delicious mayo, you have no choice but to make it yourself.
Despite my deep and committed love of mayo, my success rate for making it had been about 50 percent. To make mayonnaise, you need to slowly beat oil into egg until an emulsion forms — that is, the oil molecules are uniformly dispersed in the egg and then hold there. Whether I used a food processor, blender or whisk, my mayonnaise often broke: the oil and egg separated, heartbreakingly deflating from a thick and attractive froth into a thin and oily puddle.
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Adding a teaspoon of water to the yolks before dripping in the oil helps create a stronger and more stable emulsion, Dori said. She picked up the secret in culinary school years ago, and her mayonnaises haven’t collapsed since.
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