I am trying to preserve home-made mayonnaise so that it can be shipped to family and friends, without the hassle of putting it in dry ice packs or the like. Is there a way to preserve it and ship the bottled mayonnaise by regular mail or courier?
How to preserve and ship home made mayonnaise
food-preservationmayonnaise
Related Solutions
Starting from the basics: Mayonnaise, as you know, is a combination of water-based liquids, water-soluble ingredients, and lipids (fats/oils). Since water and lipids are immiscible, that makes mayonnaise an emulsion.
Because the droplets (of fat) suspended in an emulsion are not actually dissolved, the properties of that emulsion depend entirely on the size of those droplets and their dispersion. The most likely reason that your mayonnaise tasted like oil is that it actually was pure oil in spots.
The technical term for this is flocculation.
(source: Cube Cola)
This is probably what happened to you - it's possible that if you had really poor dispersion, you might have even been closer to the "coalescence" stage.
To use a more tangible example, consider what happens when you dissolve flour or corn starch in cold water, then heat it. The starch gelatinizes and you end up with a fairly uniform, thick paste. Now think of what happens if you toss it into hot water; you'll tend to end up with something that isn't uniform, instead you'll end up with big globs of cooked flour floating around in thin, cloudy water.
Keep in mind that the chemistry is completely different with an emulsion - in fact, there technically is no chemistry happening with an emulsion until emulsifiers come into the picture - but the concept is the same. You might not be able to see those globs of oil floating around in the water as well as you can see the globs of flour, but if you didn't get proper dispersion and suspension, they're there, and they will taste exactly how you'd expect a glob of pure oil to taste.
Traditional mayonnaise uses raw egg yolk (containing lecithin) and mustard (containing mucilage), both of which act as emulsifiers. These are called "emulsifiers" mainly because they help the emulsion to stay stable, which is why the store-bought mayonnaise doesn't separate (it also probably has a few extra additives). However, they aren't all that helpful for getting that initial dispersion; the most efficient way to do that is to let small drops of oil into a liquid that is being constantly and uniformly agitated.
You can do this by stirring, but an even better way is to use an immersion blender with emulsifying blade. Note that this is not the flat aerating blade that is often confused with the emulsifying blade, nor is it the star-shaped liquefying blade that is the default on most sticks and many manufacturers confusingly call an "emulsifying" blade. The one you want looks a bit like a hubcap; it's flat with several slits or holes and is sometimes also called a "smoothie blade" or "whisk blade":
or
(the one I'm talking about is the bottom left)
These things are perfect for preparations like mayonnaise, but if you don't have one, you can get halfway decent results with a wire whisk. You'll just need to use a lot of elbow grease.
If you get really good dispersion, and use sufficient emulsifiers such that the emulsion doesn't separate too fast, then I promise you, your mayo won't have that "fatty" taste and it will be 1000 times better than the store-bought goop.
I think you will get the 'best result' out of 'par baking' your rolls. I have done this myself, though not for shipping. It is simply easier to make a large batch and then store them for use as needed. IMHO rolls are best served hot and fresh, and while re-heating fully baked rolls can recapture some of the glory that is fresh baked bread, allowing your customers to finish bake a partially baked product will give them the convenience of truly fresh rolls on demand. The technique (and recipe, for my part) I picked up from Alton Brown, in the episode of Good Eats: Roll Call. Alton's recipe for Parker House Rolls includes a par baking option:
For Brown and Serve option:
Assemble rolls as above, but bake as follows.
Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F.
Bake until the outside of the rolls just begin to set but have not browned and the internal temperature is 185 degrees, about 30 minutes. Remove and cool on the pan for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove the rolls from the pan and place on a cooling rack until they are room temperature, 30 to 40 minutes. Place the rolls in bags and freeze for up to 3 months.
To Finish:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Thaw the rolls for 60 to 90 minutes.
Spray a sheet pan with nonstick spray. Place the rolls on the prepared sheet pan and bake until the rolls reach an internal temperature of 200 degrees F. Rotate the pan halfway through baking, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove the pan to a cooling rack and cool for 2 to 3 minutes before serving.
The key 'take-aways' that you will want to apply are:
- Bake to internal temp of 185°F
- Cool to Room Temp
- Freeze for up to 3 months
Best Answer
Nope. The only way you can really preserve things at home for room temperature storage is by canning in a boiling water bath or pressure cooker, and the heat from that will break the emulsion of your mayonnaise, completely ruining it. On top of this, mayonnaise will also tend to break at room temperature, so it won't work even if you make it safe.
Commercial mayonnaise uses pasteurized ingredients (in particular the eggs), and presumably the manufacturing process takes additional steps to avoid recontamination before it gets sealed up in jars. It also has additional stabilizers to keep it from breaking while sitting around at room temperature. The result is apparently shelf-stable, but even if you add emulsifiers/stabilizers to yours and get it to not break during shipping, I would be really hesitant to assume you've gotten it as bacteria-proof as the commercial stuff.