Mayonnaise

Yep. Mayo. That jar of slightly sour fatty stuff that at least one person you know can eat by the spoonful.

I say, why dirty the spoon?

Ever make your own salad dressing? That's a kind of mayonnaise as well.

See, mayo is simply an emulsion of oil and acid. That's it. Simple, right?

Well...

Ok, don't get scared. We're doing a small batch and we're going to start with a simple recipe.

You need the following edibles:

one egg yolk at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon prepared mustard
one teaspoon of apple cider vinegar - or white, but not any kind of balsamic - that'll make your final product taste funny
1 1/2 teaspoons of lemon juice, preferably fresh
1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon of granulated sugar
3/4 cup of either olive or vegetable oil

So, cavernous, huh? Stay tuned.

And for your hardware you'll need:
A blender (either immersion/stick or a stand-up, I prefer the stick)
A mixing bowl - as small as you can, we'll have about a cup of finished product here
A rubber scraper
A container of some kind for storage.

Let's touch on the egg yolk first. Yes, it's a raw egg. Use a pasteurized egg and you'll be fine. Besides which, when you see the order of operation we'll be using here, you'll see that any eggborn microbes won't have much of a chance to propagate.

So, first in the bowl will be your egg yolk, mustard, salt and sugar lemon juice and vinegar. Whisk them all together nice and smooth.

Now here's the tricky part. You're pretty well set up by the mustard, which is already an emulsion. But you still need to start slow. Like, really slow.

For this demonstration we'll be going with a stick blender with whisk attachment, but the stand-up variety will do just fine. Also I'll be using the measuring cup that came in the box with the mixer.

It was a gift from a dear friend, so I think I'll be using it.

$29.99 on Overstock.com right now. Worth every penny.

Deep breath, here we go.

With the blender running, slowly, drop by drop, add the oil until you get the beginnings of a firm, rich emulsion started. Once that's done, increase the rate of incorporation to a thin stream. Make it last as long as you can, five or six minutes if you can. Yes, that sounds like a lot and it's only six ounces of oil.

The purpose of this exercise is to practice your patience and your resolve. Because if you rush it and add the oil too fast, you don't get a rich, creamy mayo. You get greasy, sloppy mess that you can't fix simply by blending.

If you do mess it up, congratulations. You've joined the club of everyone else who's tried this. We're a friendly bunch, and a few of us know how to bake.

Here's what you'll need to fix it
One (1) ladle.

Dip your oil back into the measuring cup, as much as you can. Start blending your mayo again and slowly, slowly, so slowly, pour the oil back into your mix. You'll know if you got it right.

Slow it down, Earnhardt.

By the way, you can totally use a hand whisk for this, too. Good arm exercise, that.

Maybe switch hands now and then.
P.S., this is a real pic. His name is Matthias Schlitte, he lives in Germany, has some kind of genetic variance that makes THAT happen, and he's a professional arm wrestler.

I suggest you make this when you know you're going to use it. It's not as full of preservatives as the commercial versions, so it has a much shorter shelf life. I'd use it all up within a week.

Our finished product.

So, what do you do with it? Whatever you want. Sandwiches are a classic. I like a little on my hamburgers. You can do potato salad, coleslaw, pasta salad. You can make a chocolate cake with this stuff.

Also, once you've mastered the technique, then you can start gussying it up to match your tastes. For instance, replace a third of your oil with chili oil. Throw a little garlic powder in. Do you know how to infuse oils? There's all kinds of ways to go with this.

And, as ever, knife in the dishwasher is for no.