I didn’t grow up eating mayo. Instead, I grew up eating salad cream, which is pretty much a tangier version of mayo and once upon a time used to be about the only salad dressing that you could get in the UK. While I still enjoy salad cream occasionally as a guilty pleasure, I think homemade mayo tops it any day. I don’t eat regular store bought mayo, but give me a fancy sandwich with some kind of fresh mayo on it, and I’ll go to town.

Mayo is incredibly easy to make and this basic recipe can be doctored with fresh herbs to make a nice herby mayo or you can add lots of garlic to make aioli. Or you can even use it as a base for other salads, like the egg salad recipe I’ll post later today.

Anyway you make it, this homemade mayo has the ability to turn a so-so sandwich into the sublime. This recipe makes about a cup of mayo with each tablespoon serving costing around 7 cents.

Homemade Mayo, from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 garlic clove

To create the base for the mayo, put the egg yolk and mustard into a medium bowl and whisk together.

Slowly, and I mean very slowly, add a little bit of oil to the mixture as you keep on whisking. Unless you are a pro, it is sometimes a bit hard to pour the oil while whisking, so I normally get Carlo to help out with the pouring, and then when my arm gets tired, we can trade off the whisking duties.

Add more olive oil once each bit is incorporated into the mayo. A thick emulsion will soon form and once this happens, you can begin pouring in the oil a little bit faster. Depending on how fast you whisk, this should take around 5 minutes.

Once the mayo is fully emulsified and all the oil added, season with salt and pepper to taste, and squeeze in a little fresh lemon juice for some zing. I also added a little microplaned garlic for an additional kick. You can keep the mayo in the fridge for up to a week in a sealed container.

We made the most awesome BLT sandwich with our mayo. The combination of farmers’ market tomatoes, salty bacon, crisp lettuce, and the mayo was divine!