5-Minute Mayo
Yep, you read that right!
This is one of my Very Favorite Recipes. We make it around here every two weeks, at least. I love the flavor, I love the texture…and I love the fact that I can go Zero to Mayo in 5 minutes flat.
Zero to Mayo in 5 minutes flat? Shoot, I can top that…give me 6 minutes flat, and I’ll turn that mayo into homemade ranch dressing! But that’s another recipe for another time. ;-)
And by making it myself, I know it’s loaded with good fats and healthful ingredients, so I can feel good about slathering it on my BLT and letting my kids pour as much ranch over their pizza as they want. It’s brain food!
What’s more, by simply adding ONE ingredient and following ONE additional step, your mayo will last for weeks in the fridge.
So when you read my recipe for Jen’s Delicious (and totally adaptable) Chicken Salad, and it calls for mayo, this is the one I grab.
No high fructose corn syrup. No rancid vegetable oils. Just real ingredients and an immersion blender.
(I’m an old-fashioned girl, but I love my immersion blender! And my washing machine.)
That bit about “leave it on the counter for 6 hours” and “keep for weeks” may seem a little odd, but I’ve been doing it for a couple years now. It’s the same principle as naturally-fermented pickles or sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt, and sour cream. Give it a try!
Trouble-shooting tip: About once a year or so I will make this, and it just WILL NOT thicken. If that happens, I blame the egg - maybe the chicken that laid it was lacking something nutritionally. It happens, even sometimes with my lovely pastured hens. So generally I’ll just throw a second egg in there and whirr it up again. It usually thickens in the fridge, but if not, I just throw it into something savory I’m baking or else use it right away as a basis for ranch dressing. No one ever notices a thing!
This batch is a little thin, although it’ll thicken in the fridge. There’s a seasonal reason…see below!
If you make this all year long, you’ll notice changes with the seasons. If you’re using eggs from real pastured chickens, the mayo will be really bright yellow in the spring and summer, fading some with the fall, and fading even more to a creamy white in the winter. The texture will change some, too. I notice that my last two batches were somewhat thinner than before, but then “the girls” are getting ready to go into a moult, where they will stop laying, lose their feathers, and grow a new batch just in time for winter. I’ve heard that chefs in France are taught to make different dishes during the different seasons to take advantage of the changes in the eggs, while here in America, we want fresh tomatoes in January and oodles of eggs all year long. Hmm.
ENJOY!