Good mayo. Stat!

January 25, 2008 1:58 AM

Please give me your tried-and-tested recipies for egg-free mayonnaise. I'm holding a dinner party tomorrow and have run into a problem.

I need a creamy egg-free mayo recipe that produces something as much like regular mayo as possible. It doesn't have to be vegan, it just has to be good. My brother-in-law is the recipient of a liver transplant and cannot have any raw-egg products due to suppressed immune system etc. (This also cancels out blue-cheese and soft-cheese products, unless they're cooked in some way.)

I need a mayo recipe that doesn't rely on eggs to emulsify the oil. Vegan recipies seem to use soy products - I have none in my pantry and it's a public holiday tomorrow, so no shopping, alas. I've pre-bought my salad stuff and can't change things now.

The salad in question is lettuce, cucumber, shallots, hard-boiled eggs and finely minced onion with a few herbs. It needs a bit of mayo to coat and bind.

Please help!

posted by ninazer0 to food & drink (13 comments total)

If you heat the non-oil ingredients (yolks, salt, vinegar, mustard) in a double boiler to a certain temperature, it cooks the eggs enough to be safe but they will still be useable for the mayonnaise once cooled. Unfortunately I can't remember what that temperature is!
posted by methylsalicylate at 2:05 AM on January 25

1) There is a diet mayonnaise recipe on this page that uses no eggs and has common pantry ingredients.

2) Commercial mayo uses pastuerized eggs and has enough preservatives in it that it is essentially bacteria-free. This page talks about that, and also has a cooked egg mayo recipe.
posted by idiotfactory at 2:48 AM on January 25

This seems to be the best recipe out there -
posted by watercarrier at 4:16 AM on January 25

http://mattyeleesvegankitchen.blogspot.com/2007/11/raw-mayo.html
posted by watercarrier at 4:17 AM on January 25

Easy.

You need a double boiler and some patience. Basically what you want to make with the egg is a zabaglione or the beginning of a hollandaise. That is, to cook the yolks but keep them runny.

Separate your eggs. Drop the yolks into the top of your double boiler, and start whisking them around. You want them to get warm but not scramble.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 5:02 AM on January 25

Could you just make an olive oil-based dressing, more like an aioli? I've had success blending up an olive oil mayo-like thing.

Here's an eggless recipe that uses a little evaporated milk, if you have it.
posted by Madamina at 5:27 AM on January 25

How about substituting something else for the mayonnaise? When I make egg salad or potato salad, I whip plain (not non-fat) yogurt with a generous glug of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, kosher salt, pepper, a sprinkle of chili powder or cayenne, and a strip of lemon zest.

Don't grate the zest, just drop it in whole so the whisk batters it around and coaxes out some of the lemon oil. Pluck the strip of zest out of the creamy yogurt dressing before you mix in the other ingredients.

If plain yogurt straight from the container would make too thin a dressing, you can drain it for a few hours to thicken it up.

(I've tried making the cooked-egg mayonnaise and found it both a pain in the neck and not quite satisfactory, but that may say more about my technique or my palate than about the recipe.)
posted by Elsa at 6:46 AM on January 25

Follow-up: Uh, my yogurt dressing might fall into the category of "soft cheese" that your brother needs to avoid. Oops.
posted by Elsa at 6:56 AM on January 25

Have you asked him about using pasteurized raw eggs? Some Googling and the 2005 FDA Food Code show that they may be a safe substitution for vulnerable populations - see info here. Of course, it'd be best to clear this with the BIL and/or his doctor, and when in doubt, leave it out. (Elsa's yogurt dressing sounds good!)
posted by ejvalentine at 7:04 AM on January 25

if pasturized raw eggs aren't cool, or you can't find them, you can adapt your reg. mayo recipe to use hardboiled egg yolks. Push them through a fine mesh sieve, and use a touch more mustard to help the emulsion, and then go to town.

I've done it by hand with the whisk, and then sieved the finished mayo to ditch any wee lumps, but if you do a food proccessor mayo, that usually comes out smooth. The hardboiled egg yolks shouldn't be way overcooked, but just this side of hardboiled, and you may need a little more than you would have normally.
posted by kumquatmay at 8:50 AM on January 25

But realistically, if he's immuno-suppressed you don't want to be monkeying with "I'm pretty sure I got the eggs up to temperature." I would imagine most people in that situation would find a polite way to decline the salad altogether. If you want to be able to offer it to him, either use one of the non-egg alternatives given above or set aside some non-dressed salad for him to eat.
posted by range at 10:41 AM on January 25

Google around for "skordalia" or "skorthalia." It's a Greek dip that's more like an eggless aioli than anything else. I've seen versions that don't call for much more than oil, garlic, lemon juice and a starch of some sort.
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:50 AM on January 25

Idiotfactory: your link about preservatives is interesting and - to be honest - the dietary restrictions seem overly paranoid. However - it's not my liver that I'm worrying about (it's not his, either, I guess) so best to play it safe.

If none of the versions I'm about to try look suitable, he's getting plain salad.
posted by ninazer0 at 3:19 PM on January 25