Pasteurized eggs and homemade mayonnaise 滅菌卵と自家製マヨネーズ

When I made cold ramen noodle, I discussed the risk of Salmonella food poisoning when eating raw or undercooked eggs. Since we like runny egg yolks and many Japanese cuisines call for raw or undercooked eggs, we have been using "free ranging and organic" eggs for these purposes, which are reportedly safer than regular mass produced eggs. Now we found we could get pasteurized eggs. The price appears to be about the same or even slightly cheaper than free ranging organic eggs. As you can see, eggs have red  "P" in a circle stamped on them indicating it is "P"asturized.

When I cracked open the shell, it looked exactly the same as any raw egg since the temperature for pasteurization is not high enough to cook the eggs. Using our first pasteurized eggs, I decided to make home-made mayonnaise. My mother makes it even now in Japan but I stopped making it many years ago. I used to make it using a hand mixer by drizzling oil in gradually. But I have seen in several cook shows where chefs made it very quickly using an immersion blender, so that is what I tried.

In the mixing cup of an immersion blender, I put two egg yolks, lemon juice and rice vinegar (1 tbs each), salt (1/2 tbs), Dijon mustard (1 tbs, smooth kind), a pinch of sugar and vegetable oil (1 cup) plus olive oil (1/2 cup, extra-virgin olive oil). I put the immersion blender to the bottom of the mixing cup and pulsed it several times as emulsion develops in the bottom. As more emulsified material appears, I continuously blend and also raised the tip of the blender off the bottom to mix everything. In 30 seconds, nice mayonnaise is made.

It tastes good. Because of the extra-virgin olive oil I used, it looks slightly greenish and you can taste both olive oil and egg yolk with nice acidity. Yolks from the pasteurized eggs work exactly same as yolks from regular eggs. Sunny-side-ups also look and taste identical to regular eggs, although the egg white looks slightly firmer than one in a regular egg.