Mayonnaise

In lieu of a priest, Egg and Lemon had their close friend Oil
officiate their weird, gross wedding ceremony. 

Mayonnaise gets a bad rap these days. We've spent decades just thinking of it as this weird, kind of flavorless sludge that we buy from the supermarket. I blame the corrupt media, fueled by the ever-more powerful Miracle Whip Lobby (Motto: when life gives you lemons, spend millions of dollars on advertising to try and get people to willfully shove lemons down their throats until either the lemon, or humanity, dies out). The fact of the matter is, back in pre-historic times they didn't have fancy store-bought jars full of over-processed, under-flavored, hyphenate-inducing goop. They just had their wits, and maybe a sharp stick if they were lucky. And now they're all dead. I still say that the store-bought mayo is a bad idea.

Ingredients:

1 Egg Yolk (There are a lot of store bought devices, of varying levels of grossness, that will seperate egg yolks and whites for you. Or you can be a man, and use your hands. Your call.)

1 Cup Oil (I like to go with a relatively neutrally flavored oil, like Corn, or Light Olive. But follow your heart. Your gross, weirdly flavored heart.)

1 TBSP Apple Cider Vinegar

1 tsp Dijon Mustard

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 a Lemon

This is another one of those recipes that seems like an awesome idea at first. Until you've been whisking a bunch of junk around a bowl for what feels like, at the minimum, 2 presidential terms, and your arm is having serious doubts about whether it wants to move forward with you as its running mate. But it tastes good, so let's get cracking. Take your egg yolk, salt, and mustard, and whisk them together in a bowl until they get a little bit lighter and frothier than they started. Take a second bowl and juice your lemon into it, being careful to keep the seeds from falling in with the juice. Add in your apple cider vinegar, and pick out all of the lemon seeds that brought dishonor upon your family just now. Take half of this mixture, and add it in to the egg mix, whisking like a frenchman. Which is a phrase I invented just now that doesn't really mean anything, but sounds like it should be offensive for some reason. Why are we only adding half of this mixture in? Because we need some liquid to suspend all of the oil we're about to add in, forming an emulsion, along with several emotional scars. But if we add in all of the vinegar and lemon juice, we'd have a super wet mix to start off with. Which would make forming the emulsion with our oil a lot harder. We're already whisking for the duration of one of Kanye West's interviews where he talks about how much of a genius he is for wearing ugly clothes. Don't make this harder on us. Don't be that guy.

Now it's time for the fun part, and by "fun," I mean, "oh god, oh god, why?" Take your egg mix, and start whisking the bejeezus out of it. While you're doing this, start adding your oil in. At first, you want to add it in painfully slowly. Just a couple drops at a time. Add it in too fast and instead of mayonnaise, you'll just end up with oily eggs. Once your emulsion starts to take form a little bit, and the pain in your arm has started damaging your spirit in addition to your body, you can start adding in the oil a little bit quicker, in a thin but constant stream. (Protip: Apparently a measuring cup is absolutely terrible for this job. Especially if you have to hold it while you're beating your mixture, causing large waves of oil to constantly threaten to splorp out into your fledgling mayo, each time giving you new and exciting heart attacks. I've heard squeeze bottles might help with this.) Once your oil is about half done, add in the rest of your vinegar and lemon mix, and then get back to whisking. The hardest part will be the end, but not because your arm hates you, and just wants to die. Well, not just because of that. You'll see your oil coming to an end, and your arm will be aching, and you'll just have the strongest urge to just pour everything that's left in and be done with it. This is the voice of failure talking. Ignore it. 

Fries sold separately. Go find your own. 

Once your oil is finished, you're pretty much done! Except that you've got raw egg in there. And sure, chances are it didn't have any salmonella in it, but do you really want tiny fish swimming around in your blood? Upstream? The fridge will help keep the bacteria from spreading, but to really kill it off you need some room temperature acid. Fortunately, you've got lemon juice and vinegar in your mayo! So, the conventional wisdom says to leave your mayo at room temperature for a minimum of an hour, but some people recommend closer to a day. They move it to the fridge where it'll last for about a week. And it won't last a week, because this stuff is good. Slather it on a taco, make some tuna, potato, or pasta salad, or even just straight-up use it as a condiment on fries and whatnot. Bonus points if you mix in a little sriracha.