Mayo or Alioli?

Maybe we don’t have to choose?

My friends!

You probably know that I love mayonnaise. If I have a sandwich, there cannot be enough mayo on it! I think I first got famous for my love of mayo when the World Central Kitchen team was in Puerto Rico after hurricane María in 2017 and I was a little bit obsessed with making sure that the sandwiches we served had enough mayo on them. That’s true, but it was important because mayo, remember, is fat. It’s calories, which people need when they’re hungry, when there’s not enough food available after a disaster. It also adds moisture to the sandwich, and when you don’t have a ton of water to drink, this is an easier sandwich to eat. 

I also think mayo has magical abilities for helping to reduce food waste. Right now, take a look inside your refrigerator…I bet you can make a meal with food you might otherwise throw away (ham salad sandwiches! Salad dressings! Eggs!). In this country, there is so much food waste, and almost 40% of it happens at home, so if we all put a little more thought into using our vegetables scraps and half-used ingredients, we could do a lot to decrease the food that we throw away. Mixing anything you have in the fridge with mayo is a really simple way to make something from nothing!

Just think…if you have ONE spoonful of mayonnaise left in the bottom of the jar, you can even make a cake! Maybe you remember when I was on my friend Stephen Colbert’s show when we made beautiful little pumpkin cakes with mayo. We took one spoon of sugar, and one spoon of mayonnaise, one spoon of cream cheese, and one spoon of pumpkin puree, and then one egg and we mixed the whole thing and we put it in the microwave for two minutes. It is an amazing cake, and it starts with a little mayo!

Now, you probably also know that I am a proud Spanish boy who loves alioli, the Catalan sauce of garlic and oil (al is garlic, oli is oil, so you have “garlic and oil”…sometimes you will see it as allioli, and the French in Provence call it “aioli”). So which is my favorite, which is the best? Can I choose? No, I cannot. But you don’t have to, you can (and should) have both. That’s because mayo and alioli are a bit different and each one has its own place in the kitchen.