Mayonesa

The traditional recipe for mayonnaise involves using only the egg yolks but I find that I prefer to make it using the whole egg as you don’t waste the white, it is less messy and a bit less work.

Ingredients

To make approximately 500ml

• 1 whole egg
• 2 tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice
• 500ml vegetable oil
• salt
• pepper

Preparation

Before you start it is very important that the egg, the oil and the lemon juice or vinegar are all at room temperature and that you are using vegetable oil, definitely not olive oil as it has too strong a flavour.

You can make the mayonnaise either in a food processor or by using a hand held blender or if you don’t have either of these use a simple whisk. My preference is the hand held blender but if you are going to use a food processor makes sure you set it on a very, low speed.

Start by cracking the egg in to a large bowl or perhaps a measuring jug and adding the lemon juice or vinegar and a little salt and pepper. Mix this all together. Then with the blender on add the oil in a slow, steady drizzle. You will see it start to look like mayonnaise fairly quickly. You can then start adding the oil a little bit faster and keep blending it but be very careful to not add the oil too fast as the mayonnaise will split. This has happened to me when I tried to add about 200ml without the blender blending.

Once you have added about 300ml of oil stop and taste the mayonnaise and add a little more salt if required. I tend to add quite a bit of salt as I think it brings out the flavour of the mayonnaise. I think that at this stage the mayonnaise tastes very nice but if you continue adding oil it becomes a bit lighter which for me makes it even better. Really this is going to be up to you to decide which way you prefer it. You can add a little more lemon juice or vinegar too if you want it to have a sharper flavour.

The quantity of mayonnaise you get obviously depends on how much oil you use. If you add all 500ml of oil you will get around 550ml of mayonnaise.

Garlic Mayonnaise Recipe – Ali Oli

Ingredients

Makes approximately 500ml

• 500ml Mayonnaise
• 2 or 3 cloves of garlic

Preparation

Make the mayonnaise following the recipe above. Crush the garlic and add about two-thirds of it to the mayonnaise. Taste it and add the remains of the garlic if required.