Finding fantastic vegan substitutes for traditional favorites is often a bit of an uphill battle – especially when you’re looking for vegan substitutes for beloved condiments like mayonnaise.
Sure, we have a global army of professional chefs and home cooks alike that are tinkering and toying with different ingredients and different techniques to produce great vegan substitutes. But getting a thick, creamy, delicious vegan mayo – especially the thick part – is proving to be more challenging than most thought.
But that’s where this detailed guide comes into play.
Below we run through (almost) everything you need to know to get deliciously thick vegan mayo that tastes – and has the same texture – as the “real deal”.
Sure, that sounds almost too good to be true. There’s nothing wrong with being skeptical.
But try what we share below all the same.
It’s going to knock your socks off!
What is Vegan Mayo, Anyway?
There are all bunch of different vegan mayonnaise options available on the market right now, with different ingredients.
Some of them are halfway decent. Some of them are downright terrible. And a handful are pretty close to the real thing – just their consistency is a little off and a little runny.
A big part of that is because (obviously) vegan mayonnaise does not include egg. Egg plays a huge part in adding a flavor bomb to traditional mayonnaise, but it also helps with the emulsification and maintaining the emulsification of mayonnaise, the real secret to the thick, creamy, consistency.
Finding an egg replacement is proving to be more challenging than just using traditional vegan egg replacements, even!
Commercial and homemade vegan mayonnaise options often include things like tofu, soy milk, or even “chickpea juice”. That gets close to the flavor of traditional mayonnaise, but it can’t lay a finger on the creamy texture.
You end up with something runny, something really thin, and something that just doesn’t have the same kind of tactile mouth feel that mayonnaise brings to the table on its own.
Why Your Vegan Mayo is Runny
The number one reason that your vegan mayonnaise is runny is because the emulsifying activator (whatever that is in that specific recipe) isn’t doing its job holding the oil and protein components in stasis with one another.
Oil and those proteins (no matter what kind of proteins they are) want to do their level best to separate.
They want to split apart, run from one another, and separated into two completely separate things. The emulsifying agent – the egg that we mentioned earlier in traditional mayonnaise – handles the heavy lifting of keeping all those ingredients suspended together without separation.
Tofu, soy milk, and chickpea juice aren’t going to be able to handle that heavy lifting on their own.
Plant-based substitutes mixed into vegan mail just don’t have the “muscle” to handle holding the creamy texture you’re looking for.
We can help.
How to Thicken Vegan Mayo
One of the easiest ways to add a bit of extra emulsification hold into your vegan mayonnaise is to mix in some lectin powder.
Lectin powder is 100% vegan, mimics the lectin found in egg yolk perfectly, and just a touch isn’t going to throw the taste or flavor of your vegan mayonnaise off at all.
Sometimes, though, that’s not going to be enough to get the job done – depending entirely on the kinds of ingredients you are using in your vegan mayonnaise recipe.
If you’re still dealing with runny mayonnaise, it might be a good idea to add a little bit of extra oil into the mixture.
Sure, that sounds pretty counterintuitive.
Especially if you feel like your vegan mayonnaise is already a little too “wet” and a little too runny.
When you remember, though, that the reason your emulsification is breaking is because the oil isn’t being suspended throughout the mixture – but instead dispersing and separating – this little trick starts to make a lot more sense.
Extra oil means that your vegan mayonnaise isn’t going to be “loose”. It’s going to tighten up, it’s going to become a little bit more chunky, and you’re going to get a much closer to “real deal” mayonnaise consistency without throwing the flavor off all bunch.
If you really need to thicken things up, though, you might need to take things to the next level and add a bit of vegan cream cheese into the recipe.
This should be seen as a nuclear option only, though. It’s going to totally change the flavor profile of your vegan mayonnaise from top to bottom.
It’s not necessarily going to create a bad flavor, not by any stretch of the imagination – but it isn’t going to be the same as regular mayonnaise.
You’ll want to add just a little bit of vegan cream cheese at a time, whipping things up and waiting to see how the emulsification holds together.
Maybe one time make a batch of vegan mayonnaise with cream cheese until you get the exact texture you’re after, just to see if you prefer the flavor.
It’s not bad!
Closing Thoughts
All in all, figuring out how to thicken vegan mayonnaise is a lot easier than most people realize even if you have to try some “off-the-wall” ingredients or approaches you wouldn’t have considered before.
This is a deceptively simple to make condiment that can frustrate you like crazy when you’re looking to produce a legitimate vegan replacement.
That being said, you can get real close – we mean real, real close – just by using a little bit of lectin powder, maybe a bit of extra oil, and (extreme circumstances) mixing in some vegan cream cheese to give your condiment a bit more body.
Tinker and toy with different approaches. Maybe a bit of lectin powder and some oil – less oil than you would have used all on its own – are enough to get the job done.
Maybe you love the way that vegan cream cheese tastes and don’t mind coming up with a “new” vegan mayonnaise to use the way you would the regular stuff.
Don’t be afraid to experiment and see how things shake out!