Mayonnaise is both polarizing and mundane, one of the most common optional add-ons to be found in pantries, refrigerators, and restaurants' condiment stations, in jars, packets, or freshly made. Similar to a fancy aioli, mayonnaise is gloopy, creamy, tangy, savory, and light but definitive in its taste, making it extremely versatile for use in sandwiches, in tuna and egg salad, and as an ingredient in raw and cooked dishes. It makes good foods even better, but it's also kind of a gross, messy thing even though it's made from ordinary, largely neutral ingredients like eggs, vinegar, and vegetable oil.
Despite its consistent presence in American food culture, mayonnaise can be very intimidating. Even the store-bought stuff can break or easily spoil, instilling in many a real fear of or aversion to mayonnaise. This leads to a narrow and careful use of mayo in the kitchen and beyond, one that collectively shuts us off to a world of possibility.
Here are all the ways you could be using mayonnaise but don't, as well as all of the ways you're using it wrong — and how to correct the situation. Keeping it unrefrigerated for too long It's an innate, long-embedded fear across American food culture, particularly in the regions where outdoor cookouts, picnics, and potlucks are a big part of social life — mayonnaise can and will turn quickly. And then, if one unknowingly eats foods made with bad mayonnaise, they can contract a food-borne illness and a host of unpleasant gastrointestina.