Vegan Aquafaba Mayonnaise

Author Notes

Aquafaba (literally “bean water,” the liquid that comes with your canned chickpeas or any bean, actually) has made me rethink a lot of what I didn’t think could be possible without eggs: meringue, mousse, cake that, if not quite angel food, is at least related to it. When whipped, the bean water will, quite magically, start to foam—not unlike beaten egg whites. I wasn’t surprised when I started to see numerous recipes capitalizing on aquafaba's frothing powers, but when I saw one for mayonnaise, my interest was piqued. I’ve always relied on store-bought, dairy-free mayonnaise without considering an alternative; wouldn’t it be nice to have a less expensive alternative? One that I could make from the liquid that often goes to waste when I open a can of chickpeas?

Turns out, homemade mayonnaise can be had sans the laborious whisking; an immersion blender will happily, swiftly do the job for you. I tested this recipe in a food processor, too, and it works, but the resulting mayonnaise is a little more runny (I had better results with a double batch).

Most aquafaba mayo recipes I found while researching call for a 1 to 3 ratio of aquafaba to oil. Some recipes, including J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s
also contain whole chickpeas, which thicken the mayonnaise but aren’t necessary for a stable emulsion. If you’d like the mayo to be a little more set, you can pop it into the fridge for a few hours after making it. When left to sit at room temperature, it’s more like a saucey aïoli than the firm, almost jiggly mayonnaise you’d find in a store-bought jar.

I like mayonnaise to be assertively tangy, and this recipe reflects that. If you’d like it to be more subtle, you can reduce the white vinegar to 2 teaspoons. The salt can be either increased or decreased by a pinch (I recommend choosing a low-sodium canned chickpea, so that you can control the final saltiness yourself). And while I haven’t myself tried making aquafaba from boiling dried chickpeas, here’s how.

This recipe yields 1 1/4 cups of mayonnaise, which will keep in a container in the fridge for about a week. Once it’s ready, you can use it in potato or pasta salad, on a vegan BLT, on toast with slices of the tomatoes that are just about to come into season, or in a vegan mayonnaise cake, which is almost definitely my next experiment. —Gena Hamshaw