Since commercial jarred mayonnaise is almost always made with soy oil, and even organic brands may be made with canola oil (highly processed rapeseed oil), I have been wanting to switch to homemade for a long time.  I had read a lot about homemade mayonnaise from Real Food bloggers, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Dr. Mary Enig, and other cookbooks, and decided to try my own.  Benefitting from others who had spent quite a lot of time experimenting with the process, I was successful right away, only one not so good batch (made with 100% unrefined olive oil–tasted too strong).  The photo below shows the mayonnaise just after it’s finished.  The only ingredients not shown are the egg yolks–three yolks from pastured eggs, at room temperature.

The complete recipe and important user comments are found in blogger Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s post about homemade mayonnaise.  I used an immersion blender and a pint canning jar as recommended in one of the comments.  Since the mayonnaise is made right in the canning jar, it can be made and stored in the same container, which really helps cleanup.  I haven’t yet found organic refined sesame seed oil, so I used organic refined sunflower oil.  The jar of whey on the left side of the photo is from drained Brown Cow plain cream top yogurt.  My whole family likes this mayonnaise.  I really appreciate Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s hard work of experimenting so that I could get good mayonnaise right away.  She has a great Real Food blog–take a look if you haven’t already.

Here’s what I used in the mayonnaise shown:

3 egg yolks, at room temperature (from local pastured chickens)
3/4 tablespoon organic lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon unrefined cane sugar, optional (from Louisiana)
1 cup expeller pressed refined organic sunflower oil (Spectrum)
3/4 tablespoon whey (drained from Brown Cow plain yogurt)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt (Celtic Sea Salt)

As recommended, I put all ingredients into the pint canning jar.  Push the immersion blender to the bottom, blend for a count of 10 without moving the blender, then begin to move the blender up and down until emulsified, takes less than a minute, maybe only 30 seconds.  The mayonnaise will be very thick.

By the way, my family loves drained yogurt, thick Greek-style, on stews, soups, etc., so I always have a fresh jar of whey handy.