Introduction (What Is Chipotle Mayo?)

No, this is not mayo that Chipotle Mexican Grill has come out with as some sort of 2019 Millennial fly trap (although I think that you and I both know some people who would buy that!). Actually, Chipotle Mayo is a mixture of chipotle peppers ground up and mixed, along with other spices, together to form a fragrant and south of the border style side dish that is just fantastic.

Chipotle mayo is great for dipping french fries, chips, sliced bell peppers, it’s great for sandwich spread, and even for tacos and for quesadilla filler! All in all, this is a great catch all side dish for fried chicken, since the spices blend so well.

Now that I think about it, this mayo is just a better version of mayonnaise with a twist. To be sure, this is no substitute for traditional mayonnaise in a lot of dishes, but this aromatic mayonnaise has plenty of applications in your kitchen, and I’m excited to share it with you!

Interestingly enough, this simple dip has a multitude of characteristics that make it pique my ravenous curiosity. But, what makes this dip so interesting, you ask? In fact, one piece of this recipe, and arguably the most important ingredient, is what I plan to focus on today.

Which Ingredient Is Most Important?

What is the most important ingredient? Well, let’s take a look at the ingredients list and see if you can’t guess which one it is before I call it out by name!

1. 1/2 Cup Mayonnaise
2. 1 Tbsp Water
3. 1-2 Tsp Freshly Squeezed Lime Juice
4. 1/8 Tsp Salt
5. 1/2 Tsp Chili Powder (use 1 Tsp for added heat)
6. 1 Tsp Smoked Paprika
7. 1/8-1/4 Tsp Chipotle Chili Powder (Or, one blended chipotle pepper combined with the mayonnaise)

Okay, got your answer? Well, if I had to guess what you guessed, it would be either chipotle pepper or smoked Spanish paprika. How did I do? However, if you chose either of these, you’ll have to subscribe and wait for those posts, because in this post I’ll be covering a good deal about mayonnaise!

Okay, But Why?

Plain old mayonnaise? But, what more is there to plain old mayonnaise than just spreading it onto bread to add some moisture, you ask. Well, for starters, many people have questions regarding topics like the following: Mayonnaise’s ingredients (what even is mayo?), how to make mayo, is mayonnaise dairy free, how many calories are in mayonnaise, and the list goes on.

Therefore, I’ll spend a portion of this blog post talking about some of the finer points of mayonnaise for those who are interested. Plus, for those who aren’t as curious, please feel free to click the “Jump to Recipe” button at the top of the page in order to go straight to the recipe (Or scroll quickly down, it’s at the bottom!).

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Read On Below, Information For The Curious

Quick Tips Regarding The Recipe

As you can see, this recipe is crazy simple, since the hardest part of making it is squeezing the lime, or using the right sized spoon to scoop out the mayonnaise from it’s jar. If you want to see a man struggle to scoop mayonnaise from a jar, find my Chipotle Lime Mayo recipe on my IGTV account, on my Instagram page @thechickenwingsblog.

But, I will say that there are a couple of nuances to making this recipe better, a few no-no’s to avoid ruining this side dish, and some pointers for the explorers who might want to mix things up a bit.

The Spice Level

First, when we’re talking how to make spicy chipotle lime mayonnaise, were talking peppers. So, it would make sense that one should taste a bit of kick, a smidgen of tingly electricity at the tip of their tongue. But, when I first tasted this recipe, I was personally underwhelmed.

Additionally, chipotle pepper in this quantity just isn’t spicy enough to cause any real damage. Plus, since many people don’t enjoy punishing themselves with ungodly amounts of heat, I decided to leave the more mild version of this recipe as the standard version.

But, since I’m a masochist, I’ve chosen to up the ante with the spice level on this. Mind you, I don’t go overboard with the spice at all. So, if you want even more spice, do so at your own discretion. I choose to fight my battles with my main dishes, not with my dipping sauces!

The Actual Spice I Use

Therefore, if the extra half Teaspoon of Hot Chili Powder doesn’t suit your fancy, I recommend that you add in Crushed Red Chili Flakes to your dish. In my experience, about a Teaspoon to start out with, and add as necessary, will be okay. These peppery little things will be all up in your taste-buds, causing all sorts of goodness!

Why don’t I use more chipotle powder, you ask? After all, chipotle is hot, it is hotter than a Jalapeño on the Scoville scale! Because, chipotle powder is highly fragrant and adding too much would simply make this mixture pungent and inedible.

Certainly, someone out there must enjoy voluminous amounts of chipotle seasoning in and around their olfactory senses. But, I have to say that 1/8-1/4 Tsp of this stuff is plenty, and if you decide you want more then I encourage you to try it out!

Lastly, the added benefit from using chili flakes instead of using chili powder is that the flakes won’t add a ton of flavor to the mix, while still adding its heat element. But, the powder has all sorts of flavor to it that will alter the end product fairly drastically.

So there you have it, one simple way to up the spice of this chipotle lime mayo dipping sauce!

Check Out My Latest Posts, I’m Sure You’ll Find Something That Interests You

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Too Much Salt Can Kill This Dip

Next, the point I want to make here is straightforward, and I’ll sound like your doctor, but please watch your salt use on this recipe! Since I am addicted to the flavor of salt (check out my wooden salt cellar in the photo above, for Christ’s sake!), I attempted to add more than the recommended dosage to this recipe (as I am want to do).

However, I was repulsed by the flavor that this imbibed into the chipotle lime dip almost to the point of discarding with my concoction in entirety!

So, to keep it short, please stick with the recommended allotment of 1/8 Tsp of salt the first time you attempt to create this dish. In addition, as I tell myself almost every time that I cook, you can always add things in later, but you can’t take things out once they’re already put in.

Summarily, use your own discretion since you’re an adult with your own free will, but if you want my advice, then approach salt conservatively in this case.

In transition, if you follow the above two pieces of advice, you’ll end up juuuuust fine when you make this mayonnaise variant. But, now let’s get on to the juicy part of this post: mayonnaise!

Mayonnaise As An Entity

To begin, since this is generally the most asked question about mayonnaise, I’ll start off and say that mayonnaise generally has about 100 calories per Tablespoon. This may vary if, for example, you use light mayonnaise (which isn’t really mayonnaise!) or if you choose to make your own mayonnaise at home.

But, 100 calories per tablespoon of creamy, fatty standard mayonnaise. Which brings me to my next point, since now I bet you’re asking yourself why mayonnaise has so many dang calories!

How To Make Mayonnaise (Simple)

First, let’s begin with the ingredients, which are egregiously simple. Listed in order of quantity, most to least:

1. 1 Cup Olive Oil
2. 1 Large Egg Yolk
3. 1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice, Divided

As you can see, this recipe calls for a whole cup of olive (1,900 kcal) and an egg yolk (55 kcal) (lemon juice has <1 calorie per Tablespoon)! Which answers your question as to why mayonnaise contains so many calories per Tablespoon.

It is simply a highly fatty product, which isn’t unhealthy in terms of the types of fats it contains, but could be abused in terms of calories in/calories out if you aren’t careful!

Next, with a little help from a friend, I will go over how to combine these ingredients, since egg and olive oil are chemically insoluble on their own!

The Process Of Making Mayonnaise

For the technique on how to make mayonnaise, read this quote from a great article by Claudio Baldini on howstuffworks.com, entitled “What Is Mayonnaise?”:

Mayonnaise is made by combining lemon juice or vinegar with egg yolks. Consequently, eggs (containing the emulsifier lecithin) bind the ingredients together and prevent separation. Then, oil is added drop by drop as the mixture is rapidly whisked. Adding oil too quickly (or insufficient, rapid whisking) will keep the two liquids from combining (emulsifying). But, as the sauce begins to thicken, oil can be added more rapidly. Seasonings are whisked in after all of the oil has been added. Blenders, mixers and food processors make it easy to make homemade mayonnaise, which many gourmets feel is far superior in taste and consistency to commercial mayonnaise.

So, by combining our acid (lemon juice) and our fat (olive oil) with our emulsifier (egg yolk), we achieve a mixture that is thick as well as satiny in its appearance! Moreover, if you want to learn more about the science behind this process, I refer you back to Baldini’s post, linked above.

Let’s Jump To Conclusions

Whew! Great, now that we know how to make the stuff, we can recap what we’ve learned about mayonnaise! First, we know that mayo is typically made of of three types of ingredients; fats, acids, and an emulsifier (combiner).

Plus, we know why this works because we checked out Baldini’s post, which tells us about how liquid droplet suspend themselves within one another (seriously cool!) in order to allow acids and fats to create a homogeneous liquid.

Additionally, we’ve learned that since mayo usually includes high amounts of fats, like olive oil, that our mayo will always come out high in calories. But, we know that the emulsifier in mayo, egg yolk, is less than 1 gram of carbs in it (it’s mostly fats and proteins), just like fats like olive oil!

Where am I leading this conversation, you ask? Well, through the art of deduction, we can ascertain that mayonnaise is entirely keto friendly! That’s right, this spicy chipotle lime mayo recipe is keto friendly for all of you diet watchers out there who are curious.

But, I’ll caveat that by saying please keep in mind that you are responsible for your diet, so always check the nutrition labels of anything you put into your body before consumption.

Last But Not Least, Light Mayo

Finally, I’d like to touch the surface on the concept of “light mayonnaise”, which, upon doing some research, is barely, if just technically, mayonnaise. For example, in light mayo, they have to remove a ton of the calories, which come from soybean oil in most generic mayonnaise brands, but still need to keep the quantity the same so they fill space with water.

But, by doing so, they take away texture, thickness and flavor. No one wants runny mayo!

So, what do these big store brand companies do? Well, they use fillers of course! In lieu of soybean oil, they use gelatin, lemon and lime peel fibers, artificial coloring, and artificial flavoring.

But, in the end people will buy it because it generally tastes good with less calories!

Plus, and I encourage you to check out Rob Endelman’s entire article, “Real Mayonnaise Vs. Light Mayonnaise”, check out these ingredient list differences:

REAL MAYONNAISE Soybean oil, water, whole eggs and egg yolks, vinegar, salt, sugar, lemon juice, natural flavors, calcium disodium EDTA (used to protect quality).

LIGHT MAYONNAISE Water, soybean oil, vinegar, modified corn starch**, whole eggs and egg yolks, sugar, salt, xanthan gum**, lemon and lime peel fibers** (thickeners), (sorbic acid**, calcium disodium EDTA) used to protect quality, lemon juice concentrate, phosphoric acid**, DL alpha tocopheryl acetate (vitamin E), natural flavors, beta carotene**. **Ingredient not in mayonnaise

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, just know that in order to reduce the calories in the product, without sacrificing flavor or consistency, one must, generally, replace ingredients with questionable alternatives.

However, just know that mayonnaise, while high in calories, is still a delicious spread with tons of healthy ways to use it!

Just like anything, use moderation, and you’ll be okay! And please, don’t hesitate to comment and share this information with your friends and family! The more people who understand the food we eat, the better we as a society can grow.