Do you, like I, put mayo on pretty much everything? Plain, garlicky, mixed with hot sauce or chilli jam? If the answer is ‘yes’, you’ve come to the right place.
I’m one of those people who have mayo with everything: meat, fish, cheese; breakfast, lunch and supper. The mayo might be plain or in combinations worth mentioning : sriracha mayo – divine; sweet chilli mayo – my personal fave; mayo based ranch dressing, mayo diluted with yoghurt and greened up with herbs. The best bit of my short-lived ketogenic period was mountains of mayonnaise on everything.
Homemade mayo is superior, without a question; but it’s actually so rich you end up using half as much as of the shop-bought Heinz. It’s a shame that you can’t make a smaller quantity of it than about half a litre. Even with my capacity for it, as above, a jar lasts a long, long time and – obviously – homemade mayo is preservative free and so should be used within a week or thereabouts.
My solution is to make my batch and divide it between two smaller jars’ one to keep, the other to give away. Alternatively, use half of it as a base for aioli – or maybe you’re a mayo monster and a large jar goes in a couple of days at yours.
Making it is fiddly and boring, drip-drop, like watching paint dry. It’s essential though – slosh too much and it’s a mass of split curdles and it’s all very well saying ‘add another yolk and start from scratch’ but can you face it after a splitting fiasco? Like me, guess not.
One final note: some recipes swear by olive oil but I find it too sharp and pungent in the already rich sauce. Rapeseed works best in my view, or even groundnut oil – don’t waste expensive EVOO on the condiment you’ll be slathering on your chips.