How to get homemade sauce to keep - avoiding UPFs

[Cigent]

I'm trying to avoid UPFs if possible, but I have a huge weakness for sauces. I know I can make them easy enough from scratch, but how do I get them to keep more than a day or two? TIA

If you add some whey it will keep 4-6 weeks in the fridge.

I think the clues in the name. It's not just ingredients but processing. If it's been dried, hydrated, powdered, thickened, extruded, etc in a factory there's maybe not much nutrition left and extra salt/sugar put in to mask the chemical after taste.

If you don’t eat salt you die; your neurones need sodium to “talk” to each other. My cardiologist has me on a high salt diet to treat my heart condition so salt is kinda complicated anyway. It’s not just that high salt = bad iyswim.

Use pasteurised dried egg in your mayo, that means that there are no bacteria at the start to make it go off. The salt and vinegar also help to preserve it.

And why are you objecting to rapeseed oil OP, I thought it was very good for you?

By that logic do you gals think sugar is also just a culinary ingredient, not a UPF?

What kind of sugar?

cane?
beet?
honey?
fructose?

but ultimately no. Like salt it's an ingredient often used to excess in UPFs but is not inherently itself a UPF (although some sugars are very processed, others are not).

Sorry, never mind, NoVA says sugar & oils are also Group 2.
Sugar is its own preservative too, of course, which is handy.
Molasses, honey, corn starch, veg oil from crushed sources, lard, salt with drying agents are in Group2 too.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with rapeseed oil, in fact it’s probably better than olive oil and sunflower oil.www.thecookingacademy.co.uk/rapeseed-versus-olive-oil/

That's exactly what sugar is - a culinary ingredient and not a UPF. Have a look at the link I posted for the NOVA groupings.

Sorry, cross posted.

What's wrong with rapeseed oil though? We only eat cold-pressed local rapeseed, which has the huge benefit of helping with our hay fever (surrounded by rape fields here).

@Cigent back to your question about preserving home made mayo. the answer is no. i also make home made mayo and cesar salad dressing (again raw egg) and no it doesn't keep past 2-3 days AT THE MAX. it doesn't freeze either.
no clue how they do this in the store but i've not seen it done in the last 50 years at home.

Cold pressed rapeseed oil is good for you. Darker yellow and usually comes in glass bottles.

the rapeseed oil that is used as 'vegetable oil' and comes in big plastic bottles and the rapeseed oil you will see in processed food is mechanically extracted by heating it to higher temperatures and sometimes using hexane. It loses a lot of its nutritional benefits in the process and is high in omega 6 which realistically we need to be a lot more careful than we are about how much we consume in comparison to omega 3.

Can't you just make small quantities of mayo at home?

Not convenient but it's a bit like my commitment to homemade cake: if I want cake I can have it - but I can't buy it, I have to make it. 80% of the time I can't be bothered so I don't end up eating it!

No, salt is not UPF, although many UPFs contain high salt. Many UPFs also contain water, or flour, or eggs, or rice etc etc.

I dont make homemade mayonaise, but generally I find that food keeps better in glass containers or stainless steel pots than in plastic containers. Also anything with good amount of garlic seems to keep longer than without.

I make mayonnaise with 3 egg yolks and at least 6 cloves of garlic. It keeps for at least a month in the fridge. Juice of half a lemon, salt, pepper and oil. Nothing else.

The internet suggests that if you add a tablespoon of yogurt whey to your mayonnaise then it will extend the shelf life up to a month. Just make sure the mayo is at room temperature when you stir the whey in. Apparently the enzymes activate and do some wizardry.

Let us know if you give it a go and it works!

@JanglyBeads not sure if this has already been answered but.... rapeseed is awful. Literally dreadful. Alllll marketing. Please have a look I don't have any links!

But aren't you referring to the kind of rapeseed which is akin to palm oil, as explained by a PP, not cold pressed rapeseed oil?

I must have read about it being unhealthy a long time ago. I found this link, but was surprised when I Googled to see how many links came up claiming that it was even better for you than extra virgin olive oil - it's not. It's a heavily refined oil.

hunterandgatherfoods.com/blogs/real-food-lifestyle/is-rape-seed-oil-unhealthy-inflammatory

I will. Thank you!

hunterandgatherfoods.com/blogs/real-food-lifestyle/avoid-vegetable-oils

More on the harmful effects of vegetable oils, including rapeseed. They are cheap to produce, hence so many UPFs containing them. There seems to be a big campaign to give them a bit of positive PR judging by articles which came up when I typed my search in.

If you've got that article from the Hunter and Gather website, you are in the right place to buy sauces and mayo that don't have rapeseed oil in. They sell avocado oil mayo and olive oil mayo. No refined seed oils at all.

I much prefer the olive oil one, but that just personal taste.