Italian mayonnaise recipe with olive oil

TEAM KETCHUP OR TEAM MAYO?

Every time fries arrive at an Italian table, the commensals split into two teams: Team Ketchup and Team Mayo.

If the mayonnaise is homemade, Team Mayo usually annihilates the other one.

I still stick to ketchup anyway.

I’ve never been a huge mayonnaise lover, except for a few very specific occasions.

The first that comes to mind—and perhaps the most sublime gastronomic experience involving mayonnaise—is tomatoes and mayo.

Nothing else.

Just ripe tomatoes, diced (when they’re in season, of course), with a little bowl of homemade mayonnaise on the side so I can dip each forkful exactly as much as I like.

I remember perfectly when this little ritual was born.

I was spending my holidays at Club Méditerranée—such a thing in the nineties!—somewhere in Calabria. Being a teenager, I was entrusted to the Junior Club, where I became inseparable from two sisters with the darkest hair I’ve ever seen. Mediterranean to the core.

It was also that strange age when dieting made you feel grown-up, whether you needed it or not, and every magazine diet sounded like gospel.

My friends were obsessed with the Dieta Dissociata.

So lunch often meant mountains of fries—after all, there were no proteins in potatoes… or so we believed—followed by vegetables.

Dinner was dedicated to meat or fish, again with vegetables.

As always, I chose tomatoes.

And I piled one or two generous spoonfuls of mayonnaise beside them.

Who even knew what mayonnaise was made of?

Certainly not us.

Maybe that’s why it tasted so wonderfully innocent.

Italian mayonnaise recipe

WHEN MAYO IMPAZZISCE

Everyone knew someone whose mayonnaise had split.

In Italian, mayonnaise doesn’t split.

It impazzisce.

It goes mad.

Perhaps because watching it separate after all that whisking can make the cook do the same.

Luckily, there’s a remedy: start again with a fresh egg yolk and slowly incorporate the failed mayonnaise into the new emulsion.

Nothing goes to waste.

And that, too, is a very Italian way of looking at life.

Our homemade mayonnaise is traditionally prepared with extra-virgin olive oil, egg yolks, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, and white pepper.

Making it with an immersion blender is surprisingly easy and rarely fails.

And if it does… now you know that it hasn’t really split.

It has simply gone a little crazy.

recipe for mayonnaise with olive oil: blender after use
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Italian mayonnaise

Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 0 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Servings 10
Calories 93 kcal
Author Claudia Rinaldi

Ingredients

  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1/2 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
  • 1/2 tablespoon white vinegar
  • 3.4 oz extra-virgin olive oil - 100 ml
  • salt & white pepper

Instructions

  1. Place a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper in the blender jar, add the lemon juice and mix well.
  2. Add the yolk and blend vigorously.

  3. Lightly heat the vinegar (don't let it boil and add it to the jar, blending continuously.

  4. Pour in the olive oil, slowly and gradually, while blending.
  5. Blend 20-30 seconds until the mayonnaise thickens. Taste for salt, pepper, and vinegar, as per your taste.

Enjoy your Italian mayonnaise!

Claudia