Proper Homemade Mayonnaise

Homemade mayonnaise and Hellmann’s mayonnaise are worlds apart and although there are times when a jar or Hellmann’s hits the mark, there is no substitute for quality ingredients and elbow grease. Whether you are serving up a prawn cocktail, making my leftover roast chicken and olive toasted sandwiches or serving mayonnaise alongside Valencian hervido – preferably with artichokes, when in season.

Oil
When choosing your oil, it’s all down to personal taste. For the recipe below, you could use 125ml of a neutral oil such as sunflower and 25ml of a more flavourful olive oil such as my favourite – Piqual. As with wine and the variety of grapes, there are many different varieties of olives producing olive oil of differing flavour, strength and acidity. Some have a bitter taste, some peppery – find your favourite.

makes around 150ml

1 good quality egg yolk
a good pinch of salt (4-fingers!)
>150ml oil – see note above
1 tsp Dijon or Colman’s mustard
1 tbsp lemon juice
freshly ground black pepper (optional)

Instructions

1. Carefully crack the egg and separate out the yolk – I do this with the shell halves. Drop the yolk into a large bowl. The bowl needs to be fairly stable, so place it on a coiled tea towel or, do as I do and wedge it in a drawer of the kitchen table! Add a good 4-finger pinch of salt to the yolk and start whisking; after a couple of minutes the yolk should be a little thicker and ready for the oil.
2. It is very important to start with just 1 or 2 drops of oil. This will start the emulsion – I normally repeat the 2 drops before moving to the next stage.
3. Once you have started the emulsion process, you can increase the amount of oil to a very thin stream and as your mayonnaise starts to thicken you can increase the flow more. Continue whisking in your oil/ oils of choice until you have a whisk full of thick glossy mayonnaise. You may not use all of the oil and you will know when to stop as you will have to knock the mix out of the whisk to be able to add the remaining ingredients.
4. It is now time to whisk in the mustard, lemon juice and black pepper if using.
5. Your mayonnaise is now ready to use as it is or you could add chopped herbs, more lemon juice, black garlic, sriracha, chipotle & lime, curry, etc.

JAMx