Having a super simple vegan mayo recipe in your arsenal will save you from sad sandwiches and summers without potato salad.
Vegan mayo will give your sandwiches life.
Vegan mayo will open new doors for you that you may have thought were closed forever on a plant-based diet... doors like potato salad, hot artichoke dips, and all the summer pasta salads you could ever want in your life.
You may be thinking, mayo? She chose to make mayo? Yeah I did. Get over it.
I know there are about a billion different fun and creative recipes I could bring you, and believe me, I will. But first, we're starting with the basics.
The foods you didn't think you could live without if you went vegan or plant-based.
So I've been thinking about what foods have made my transition to a vegan lifestyle easier. Honestly, it's the sauces and spreads. The condiments.
Sometimes too many veggies can be, well, too effing much. At some point you gotta be able to say enough is enough and slather on some good ole mayo or drown it out in ranch (that one's coming soon!) or cheese sauce.
Can you eat mayo as a vegan?
You may be thinking, but wait? There's no meat in mayo - I'm good to go, right? As a vegetarian who consumes eggs & dairy, yup, you're good to go, as you are with most other sauces and spreads. Vegan life though - sucks the happiness right out of your sandwiches...
No but really.
It's a no-go for vegan life because of the egg, but thankfully, I have a magical solution that will blow your mind a little bit.
What is vegan mayo made of?
Looking at a classic mayo ingredient list, you have eggs, oil, water, vinegar, lemon juice, salt, sugar, calcium disodium (what?), and "natural flavors.
A vegan mayonnaise recipe is not all that different - just gotta change out the egg and avoid some of the weird preservative stuff.
- aquafaba (liquid from a can of chickpeas) <-- this stuff is legit magical. unicorn status.
- vinegar
- sea salt
- sugar
- lemon juice
- dry mustard
- avocado oil
Simple ingredients for sure.
Is vegan mayo bad for you?
Well here we go. One thing I do not adapt to is "good food" or "bad food."
I am not the food police. I am not here to tell you that you can and can't eat something. I'm not here to say something is a bad food and that you should eat this instead.
So I'm going to instead give you the facts. I will always give you all the details on what is in the recipe, and you can then make your own judgment call.
For me, vegan mayo makes my sandwiches happy, which in turn makes my tastebuds happy. Do I add huge spoonfuls to my sandwich? Nope. But if you do, that's totally cool cause you gotta do you.
How to make vegan mayo:
So this recipe for vegan mayo is so insanely easy, which is key for a staple food. You want to make sure you always have some on hand, so if you're making it often, it's gotta be easy for us busy folk, right?
Otherwise, I know you'll just pick up a jar of Veganaise or Just Mayo instead (which is what I was doing for the last year before discovering how easy it is to make my own).
So this is how simple it is to make vegan mayo:
- Add the aquafaba, vinegar, salt, sugar, lemon juice, and dry mustard into a large glass measuring cup or mason jar.
- Using an immersion blender, mix until combined.
- With the blender running, very very slowly add in the oil. Like REALLY slowly (this is the key!). It should take you 5 minutes to add in your avocado oil. If you go slow enough, the mixture will eventually thicken. For those first 2-3 minutes, you will be asking yourself what you did wrong because it looks nothing like mayo and you probably messed it up. I promise you that if you go slow and are patient, you'll have your own vegan mayo in 5 minutes.
How to thicken vegan mayo:
With mayo, there is really only one trick to getting it to thicken up. I've noticed that there's really nothing you can do to fix it once you mess up.
And be mess up, I mean, pouring in all the oil right away without being patient.
You really need to give the oil time to come together with the rest of the ingredients. The oil naturally wants to separate from the rest of the ingredients, but if you give it the full 5 minutes of pouring extremely snail-pace-slow, you'll give it the time it needs to come together and join in a lovely marriage of sandwich spread.
Hopefully I've answered all the possible questions you could ever have about making your own vegan mayo at home. Always have a jar on hand for your sandwiches, salads, and dressings.
I've started using this mayo in my Vegan Chicken Salad this summer and it tastes even better than it used to, and I was already in love with that recipe!
What will you use this vegan mayo for??
Vegan Mayo
Ingredients
- ¼ cup aquafaba (liquid from a can of chickpeas)
- 1 teaspoon white vinegar
- ½ teaspoon Pink Himalayan Salt or sea salt
- ½ teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 2 teaspoon ground dry mustard
- ¾ cup avocado oil
Instructions
- Add the aquafaba, vinegar, salt, sugar, lemon juice, and dry mustard into a large glass measuring cup or mason jar.
- Using an immersion blender, mix until combined.
- With the blender running, very very slowly add in the oil. Like REALLY slowly (this is the key!). It should take you 5 minutes to add in your avocado oil. If you go slow enough, the mixture will eventually thicken. Blend until completely combined and the consistency of mayonnaise.
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