I went into four different stores, Dominicks, Jewel, Tony’s and Strack and Van Til and the 32 ounce jar of Hellmans or Kraft was between $5.99 and $6.29 a jar?
Why? I can get eggs for 99¢ a dozen and and a huge thing of oil for $2.50. I guess the answer is make your own. I don’t really use mayo or even Miracle Whip often, so I will admit it’s been over a year since I bought any.
It’s almost as cheap to go to Subway order a sub and steal 50 packets of their mayo.
That does sound expensive. Here, a litre jar (33.8140227 US fluid ounces) just cost me 3.29, but I can get the generic no name brand for a lot less.
Making your own is inexpensive and easy, but it doesn’t keep as well so I wouldn’t recommend it. The risk of food poisoning is there, if you don’t use it within a day or two.
A big container of oil costs more than $2.50 in general now. Over the past year or two, the price of cooking oil has damn near doubled.
I’m still not sure if this was a result of the whole food price jump or if it’s ethanol’s fault, but in the past 1-1.5 years the costs of fryer oil at my work has gone from roughly $22/35 lbs to about $45/35 lbs of oil.
CostCo has these huge gallon jugs of mayo for less than $10.
Where are you at? Because you can get 30 ounce jars of Hellman’s mayo at Giants in Northern Virginia for $4.49 and the store brand for $3.19,
I’ve been making my own mayo for the last two years (commercial mayo has sugar in it) and I haven’t found that to be true. I make up a batch and it lasts me for weeks. If there were problems I’m sure I would have found out by now.
Here’s my recipe:
2 egg whites
1 whole egg
1/4 cup of light olive oil
1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 heaping tablespoon of yellow mustard
extra big pinch of kosher salt
light grind of pepper (about a half turn)
4-5 tablespoons of lemon juice (I cheat and use the bottled stuff)
I put all that in the blender and blend for a couple of minutes. Then I slowly drizzle in 1 1/2 cups of vegetable oil. It gets really thick and I have to stop the blender and use a spatula to get stuff off the sides and mix it around. I blend for a couple of minutes. When it all looks blended I plop it into a tupperware container and put it in the fridge. It’s thick, rich, tastes good to me, and, as I said, lasts me for weeks.
A quick look at Safeway’s website, which has online ordering and delivery, shows that mayo averages about $4.40 - $4.50 here in Tucson. If you have one of their store cards, you can get Kraft mayo for $3.79 and their own store brand for $2.89 per 30-ounce jar. Not that expensive from where I sit.
Well, everyone’s immune system varies. However, checking out Alton Brown’s homemade mayo recipe in which he recommends a week’s expiration date - I haven’t exactly done the math, but you may be using a higher proportion of acid in yours compared to anything spoilable, which would account for a better “shelf life.” (From what I’ve read, commercial mayos have better antibacterial properties than homemade because they usually have more vinegar or other acids. Obviously, boosting acid in homemade versions will help change that.)
Not Duke’s! 
It’s a southern thing. 
I’ve noticed this, too. Two months ago, Kraft mayo would be on sale every few weeks for $1.89 to $2.19, and suddenly it’s $5.29 and hasn’t been on sale in weeks. All the generic and house brands are up, too. oil has gone up but not by that much, and it is still going on sale periodically. I just bought 48 ounces of canola oil for $2.39. It’s a mystery to me!
And here I’ve been really annoyed that mayo skyrocketed to $3.99. You folks are making me want to stock up.
This spring everything made with soybean oil went up drastically. The cooking oil doubled in price. I’ll bet the mayo you’re looking at has soybean oil.
Damn oil speculators!
I’m in Chicago (Helmans or Kraft)
Dominicks (owned by Safeway) $6.29
Jewel $6.19
Tonys $5.89
Strack And Van Til $5.99
The house brands are about $4.50
The last time I bought mayo was about $2.50 on sale. I was gonna buy fish sticks and make tartar sauce, because the tartar sauce was so expensive.
Which also reminds me why are fish sticks so expensive? Here you get 10 fish fillets or the 18 or whatever the equivilent in fish sticks is, for $7.00. Gortons or Van De Camps
I don’t like the store brands of mayo or fish sticks, which are less.
So I will eat something else
:smack: CORRECTION…
That should be 2 egg YOLKS.
Whites might be healthier for some, but I don’t know how it would taste.
DSYoungEsq, I’ll have to order some Dukes sometime. There are Japanese mayos that also don’t have sugar, but the local Asian market in the neighborhood closed.
Ferret Herder, I think I do have a pretty good immune system. Possibly growing up on a farm helped out there. Maybe it is the amount of “lemon juice” (in quotes because I know I should be using real lemons, but bottled is easier) that affects the shelf life. The recipe I originally got called for less, but I find I like the bite it gives, makes it less boring. I also use more mustard than the original recipe called for. This was the smallest batch recipe I could find. The first couple batches I made, I threw out after about a week. Then I got lazy and left it. A couple of weeks later I needed mayo and didn’t have time to make a new batch. I took it out and smelled it. It smelled ok. It looked ok. I ate a tiny amount and it tasted ok, so I tried it. It was fine and I had no intestinal problems, so from then on, I quit throwing away perfectly good batches.
ETA, when we did buy regular mayo I’d buy the BIG-assed container of Hellmans from Costco. I still, to this day, have some of that left in the fridge. It lasts for freaking ever. One of them would last a year, and I’d still eat it right to the bottom.
Not if you boil the eggs first.
Of course, it doesn’t mix as easily…
No no, you mix it up first, then you boil it.
I went to a store called “Food4less” (North and Ciecero in Chicago) the Kraft and Hellmans was $7.08 a jar.
LOL
The store brand by Kroger was 2/$4.00
Something must be up with the brand name type of mayo
I don’t know why it’s that expensive, but I hope the price continues to skyrocket so restaurants will stop smearing goddamned mayonnaise all over every goddamned thing I order.
A world where a thick coating of mayonnaise is no longer the default? A silver lining to this economic apocalypse…