Danny’s been laying down some sammiches lately and I figured this is a perfect segue into a topic I’ve been meaning to cover for a while now.

Condiments.

For paleo eaters condiments can be a huge hassle.  Most are made with processed oils, sugars, and other unsavory stuff, but especially in the West, they’ve become such a part of our dietary mindset that doing away with them entirely is unthinkable.

The beautiful part of all this is that the condiments we’ve come to know and love so much really aren’t all that difficult to make, and while the [paleo] variations might not be quite the same as the jars and bottles you grew up with, they’ll do the job, they’re much healthier, and once you’ve opened up your culinary repertoire to making them you can being altering them to make them even better than before.

I’ll start this series off with the archetypal sandwich spread, mayonnaise.  Its very simple to make, especially if you have the right equipment.

While mayo, being all fat, seems to be on the paleo bandwagon, there’s a HUGE caveat here that most men would never know about.  Soy beans.  Soy bean oil, while touted in the past as a hero come to save us from the perils of heart disease and high blood pressure that come along with other, more natural lipids, is recently being realized for what it is, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Paleo eaters are no strangers to the idea that saturated fats are your friends, so the danger of soy goes beyond that.  If you take a quick glance at the Wikipedia page for Soy Oil and scroll down to the “production” section you’ll see “rolled into flakes, and solvent-extracted with hexanes. The oil is then refined, blended for different applications, and sometimes hydrogenated”

What all that means is that soy oil is not natural.  It doesn’t exist like other natural vegetable fats like olive or coconut oils.  You cant squeeze something that grew in the ground to get it.  Its a modern product of industrialization, like smog.

It doesn’t stop there.  As a man soy is killing you, and possibly growing you bitch tits. Bottom line soy, like raisins, is evil and must be avoided.

But what about Asians?  The Japanese are known for their soy consumption AND phenomenal health!  Just take a look at the sex drive of the modern Japanese person.  While soy does have some surface health benefits, the overall impact it has on your body, especially as a man, is just plain bad.

So with soy based salad oils out, whats the alternative?  Easy, Virgin olive oil. Though I wouldn’t use EXTRA virgin, as the cost to you for that first press oil, along with the flavor it has, is wasted in an application like this.

Hardware

or

Software

  • 3 egg yolks
  • 2 cups of virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 a tsp of mustard powder (you can use prepared liquid mustard as well)
  • 1 tsp of lemon juice (about half a lemon)

Do Work!

  1. Start by putting the egg yolks and mustard powder into either your blender, food processor, or bowl and whipping them lightly.  One pulse for the processor, a few seconds for the blender, or about thirty seconds by hand
  2. Slowly begin to drizzle the oil into the egg yolks while constantly beating.  This is much easier with the machines for a multitude of reasons, but the biggest is that whisking while pouring carefully can be a challenge as you need one hand to hold the bowl, usually.  To get around this find a pot or a saucepan that the mixing bowl will seat into firmly.  Take a damp towel and place it overtop of the opening of the pot and set the bowl ontop.  The towel will act like a gasket and keep the bowl in place.  You might want to weigh the pot down with some rice or dried beans so it doesn’t slide so much while you whisk.
  3. Continue to drizzle in the oil while beating constantly.  As you get farther along and the mayonnaise begins to form you can increase the speed at which you pour.  If the mayo begins to get really thick and seize up use the lemon juice to thin it back down.
  4. Keep going until all the oil is incorporated.  Season with salt and pepper (not listed)

This homemade mayo is much healthier and wholesome and paleo friendly.  By using this over store bought jarred mayo you’re taking another small step to reclaiming your kitchen and living a healthier life.

Feel free to experiment with flavors.  Adding things like finely chopped garlic, shallots, fresh herbs, or even roasted peppers jarred in oil you can create a fantastic, healthy, and easy spread thats much more refined and flavorful then the plain old mayo you’ve become accustom too.

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