Safe mayo! No, really!

I have spent a while trying to figure out a way to make truly safe mayonnaise.

There is a risk of salmonella poisoning with any raw egg product. It wasn't always this way; salmonella used to occur only in fresh eggs that were not cooked right away. However, today, salmonella is getting into the eggs before they're even cracked.

People who are immune compromised (many children with autism, or anyone with an autoimmune disease) are going to have a harder time fighting off a salmonella infection, too.

There are a couple of ways I'd researched to make a safe mayonnaise. One was using a cooked mayo recipe. However, in the cooked mayo recipe usually used by the Pecanbread members, the cooking does not kill salmonella -- the mixture does not get hot enough. I stuck a thermometer in it to be sure and it never got up to 150 degrees, which is the temperature necessary to kill salmonella. Not only that, the temperature must be maintained for 3.5 minutes, which is impossible without cooking the egg.

Another way to ensure safe mayo is to use PH test strips, and make sure that the PH is around 3.5. An acid environment kills salmonella.

(I had a citation for that one, I did, but it makes you sign up for this service now. I will give you the link anyway HERE should you choose to check it out).

But let's face it - none of those ways are really all that easy. I want easy! I want safe!

You could also buy pasteurized eggs. However, none of the stores near me carried them.

I was about to give up! I was so mad!

And then I spotted a carton of liquid egg whites at the supermarket.

Ingredients: Egg whites

I was intrigued. They were cheap, they were PASTEURIZED (*choir of angels*)

But would it work?

YES! YES! YES!

SAFE MAYONNAISE WITH PASTEURIZED EGG WHITES

1/4 cup egg white (egg white ONLY in the carton)
1/2 tsp ground mustard
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp vinegar
3/4 cup oil (approximate)
ear plugs (you can thank me later)

Dump the egg white, ground mustard, salt, and vinegar into your blender. Put your ear plugs on. Turn the blender on to HIGH and start adding the oil slowly. How slowly? Add it at a speed where you think you will possibly never ever be done with the mayo.

Keep adding it slowly, until the mixture starts to emulsify. If you look inside, at the beginning you will be able to see right to the bottom of the blender. Staring at the blade is kind of scary, so look away now and then.

You'll notice a difference in the sound as the mayo starts to glop together. Keep adding the oil slowly until it has glopped together to the point where you can't see the blade anymore - or if you can, it's intermittent.

Then stop the blender and you will have mayo! Safe mayo! Germ free mayo!

I know, awesome, right?

Keeps for about two weeks, but mine never lasts that long. You can make a second batch right after the first if you want, but give the blender 5-10 minutes to cool down. Running it at high speed warms things up and it could make your mayo end up a bit thinner than you'd like it.

Enjoy!

NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT GET LIQUID EGGS. JUST THE EGG WHITES. Why? Because there's about a billion ingredients in liquid eggs, but egg whites are only whites. Huh. Why do they do that? See what this page says:

Liquid eggs are frozen in a blast freezer at -23°C. When thawed, whites and whole eggs are free-flowing, but freezing gelatinizes straight yolk. Therefore, yolk is combined with sugar, corn syrup, glycerin, phosphates or salt to ensure it stays fluid.

Ew.

So yeah, egg whites for the win!