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Poor Beth. I almost gagged with you at the thought of washing the mayo jar as a child. I will use a limited amount of Hellman's in recipes, but I have to hold my breath, avert my gaze as I glop it from the jar, and stir it in very quickly. There is also a waiting period before I can eat the food.

I do love mayo. I grew up in a brown rice and broccoli kind of family, and when I was going through adolescent growth spurts I'd eat mayo straight out of the jar (for some reason we always had mayo in the fridge), which I suspect was a response to the lack of necessary fat in my diet.
I still love mayo. I often doctor up Hellman's if I'm too lazy to make my own- whisk in some olive oil, or even better, olive oil in which I've roasted garlic, or bacon fat, as well as herbs and spices and such. And when I make grilled cheese sandwiches, I smear mayo on the outside of the bread instead of melting butter- works incredibly well.

mayo is a perfect condiment. and to those who say it's gross "by itself"... what condiments do you eat "by themselves"?

I must say though i'm surprised to hear about mayo in mashed potatoes. I love the stuff as much as anybody but i've never heard of that.

with french fries, i love to double-dip once in mayo, and once in ketchup. Mayo is a must on almost any cold-cut sandwich, and an absolutely essential supporting player in potato salad.

also, i've made my own mayonnaise, but i'm not totally convinced that it's better than hellman's. some things are best left to the experts...

I used to use mayo on a lot of things, but as I taught myself to be a better cook, I generally discovered that there are far superior sauces out there. I'll use it in a potato or chicken salad, though. And I'll still dip fries in it, if I happen to be in a situation where fries and mayo are in alignment in front of me, but I don't seek it out.

Gross. Mayo freaks me out.
Homemade, flavored mayos as a component to a dish are the only versions excluded.

I am a huge fan of Duke's Mayonnaise. It has tons of flavor and it might just be a southern thing, but it is delicious.

Anything as gloriously French as mayonnaise and french fries is okay in my book - mayo has such a weird place in culture now. Beloved among chefs and broadly in Middle America, but ignored by a significant slice of food-lovers.

I love mayo and now that it is made with free range eggs and they do the range including the lighter ones, my girlfriend will eat it to.

Kenji: One takes corrections seriously from the author of the "foolproof pie crust" recipe, as well as the revised mashed potato technique that I think everyone should use. I sit corrected; I saw the EDTA in the ingredient list but mistook it for a stabilizer (i.e., "protecting quality" by keeping it from separating even though water is the second ingredient).

One of my key takeaways from Ruhlman's book Ratio was that you really can make a tiny batch of mayonnaise if that's all you need. If you truly only need ½ cup or so and you find it just too eggy, I suppose you can always break the yolk into a small bowl and pour half of it into your mixing bowl to start the emulsion, but I doubt that'd be necessary. One yolk will probably emulsify nearly two cups of oil if properly mixed, I think I read, so making ½ cup from one yolk should be no problem, and it really does take about a minute with that stupid electric whisk that I never thought I'd use for anything.

(The other use I found for it? Stirring tahini in the big jar mine comes in. I never got it that thoroughly mixed with anything else. But I don't use it for actual whisking; it's just too hard to control outside of a jar.)

Mayo is gross except for egg, potato, or tuna salad, and then just enough to barely hold it together. I make my chicken salad with plain yogurt because it tastes lighter and brighter. I also eat it with steamed artichokes at my parents' house, I can't do it anywhere else, same with drinking milk with dinner, I can only do it at my parents' house.

@mdeatherage

Actually, hellman's doesn't even contain chemical stabilizers (unless you count the lecithin in egg yolks). There's some EDTA in there, which is what prevents it from oxidizing (the main problem with homemade mayo, and why Hellman's lasts longer than homemade), but that's a preservative, not a stibilizer. As far as mass-produced products go, Hellman's is way up there on the "purity" scale with Häagen-Dazs!

And I'm with you - I almost always have some form of homemade mayo in the fridge (be it mayo, aioli, or burger "sauce"). Countless uses for the stuff. Actually, I just used some mayo today because I ran out of eggs halfway through breading a batch of chicken cutlets. A little mayo/mustard/flour batter works great as the "sticky" layer in breading.

I'm one of those Yurpian heathens who loves to dip her pommes de terre frites in mayo...

And I wasn't aware it was "out," either.

Yeah, homemade mayo is best. But I keep a jar of Hellmann's in the fridge.