Every store I’ve been to seems to carry some organic / healthfood / non-GMO alternative / knock off brand.
Even my local corner delis all carry “Best Foods” brand. I’ve tried Safeway too; no dice.
Obviously Whole Foods doesn’t carry it. It’s all Sir Kensington and other high end health-conscious alternatives. That’s all well and good, but I have a recipe that requires classic Hellman’s mayo and I don’t want some locally produced variant. I also don’t want to run all over the city trying to find mayonnaise. I love that we’re such a progressive anti-corporate (in certain respects anyway) society here in San Francisco, but I simply can’t use some Trader Joe’s knock-off brand; it needs to be the real deal. Any ideas??
Thanks, I didn’t know that. I read that it was a subsidiary or something like that and the ingredients and ratio supposedly differ; ie. Best Foods more lemon juice, less creamy, etc. I needed it for a Dungeness mustard sauce that I was making tonight, but I think I’m going to postpone and just order Hellman’s from Amazon or an online grocery in future.
On a similar topic, I seem to be having some trouble finding light cream (~18% m.f.) in this city as well. No luck at Whole Foods on California or Real Foods on Fillmore so far… I’ll keep searching but this seems like such a staple item that every grocery store should carry. I’ll try Beau Market on Leavenworth this aft as I’m walking by. I’m surprised this is proving so difficult though.
I’ve never seen light cream in a grocery store on the west coast. Try half and half or a mix of half and half and heavy cream.
And as Coll says, Best Foods mayo should be the same as Hellmans. I grew up with Best Foods, either the label or commercials said “known as Hellmans east of the Rockies”
That’s so strange, why is that? It’s such a ubiquitous item on the East Coast… how do you approximate 18-20% m.f. for recipes; dilute with milk or something? I guess I’ll skip the mustard sauce as it doesn’t sound like I’m going to be able to do it right.
You might also find that all you can find is whipping cream, not heavy cream. And no, they are not the same. I don’t understand why finding a full range of dairy products is so hard everywhere but the Northeast.
Just FYI, some folks on the Gardenweb/Houzz cooking forum were complaining about a year back, that something had changed on the Hellman’s/Best Foods mayo - ingredients were identical, but the new formulation (possibly a new process?) was thinner than before.
I grew up on Hellman’s, but Best Foods is the closest thing to it.
Ya, you take heavy cream and dilute it with a lighter diary product to get to the % you want.
As to Helman’s vs Best Foods, I can’t imagine you’d tell any difference in a sauce with cream and mustard. The company says they’re the same and even according to the people who say they’re not, it’s a slight difference. I’ve done a blind tasting of the two with some east coast transplants and half the people thought they tasted the same and the other half thought two samples of the same mayo (like from the same jar) tasted different. I’m going with they’re the same.
Isn’t light cream a British thing?
