Homemade Baconnaise

So, we’ve established that homemade mayonnaise is doable and so worth it, right?

Here’s my next step: an extra burst of flavor from our old favorite…oh yes, bacon.

This is apparently a favorite in the Paleo community, so I thought I should probably jump on the bandwagon, for my husband’s sake.

It is super easy, with only a few ingredients, and since I save our bacon fat, it was nearly free for us.  If you are a little short on bacon fat, I bet the bacon-y flavor would still shine through if you used, say, half a cup of bacon fat, and half a cup of olive oil.

Homemade Baconnaise

Ingredients:
2 egg yolks*
1 tsp. mustard
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. melted bacon fat (or tallow if you want to make beef-aise, duck fat if you want to make duck-aise)

Instructions:

1. In medium bowl, whisk egg yolks, mustard, and ACV or lemon juice very thoroughly.
2. Very slowly, add melted fat to the egg yolk mixture, whisking quickly the whole time.  I mean super slowly, like start out with just a drop or two at a time. 
3. Watch to make sure the oil is incorporating itself into the mixture, and that it is starting to get thick and creamy.  If it is super-runny, and the oil is just pooling on top, your baconnaise has “split,” or failed to emulsify.  You can save it by adding it (again, very slowly) to an additional egg yolk.

Note 1: This is a “sometimes food” in our house, not because of the saturated fat or cholesterol (which we are generally fans of), but because bacon from less-than-ideal sources (even if it’s uncured, like mine) is pretty high in omega-6′s compared to omega-3′s.  Most of us could use more omega-3′s in comparison to our omega-6′s, so unless we have a really great source of bacon (like pastured/fed fantastic stuff), we probably don’t want to be inhaling the stuff every morning.  Also, I’ve read that pigs are notoriously bad at converting PUFA’s (less stable polyunsaturated fatty acids) from their food into saturated fat (the stable kind we like) in their bodies, also making bacon a good choice for, well, sometimes.

*Note 2: These are raw egg yolks.  If you aren’t comfortable with that, or you don’t know where your eggs came from/don’t trust their source, use pasteurized in-shell eggs.  Washing the egg before cracking it is supposed to help prevent contamination from any salmonella on the shell, however, I guess something like 1 in 30,000 eggs may have salmonella inside it.  The chances of the average egg-eater encountering such an egg is one in every 84 years, to put that in perspective.  But do note that all the official food safety people advise against eating raw or undercooked eggs.