The vegan mayo revolution has officially arrived. Follow Your Heart was the first with the very first eggless-mayo but Hampton Creek took the market by storm with their release of Just Mayo. Even Hellman’s Mayonnaise, which tried to sue Hampton Creek for encroaching on their claim on mayo, finally caved in and, in fact, has launched their very own eggless mayo product. Over the years, food scientists have gathered and racked their brains for ways to replicate eggs for plant-based mayo and other products in general. Funnily enough, the secret ingredient has most likely been sitting in their cupboard the whole time and Sir Kensington’s “Fabanaise” has figured it out: aquafaba!

Aquafaba, is the brine water that naturally occurs and is leftover when cooking chickpeas. Vegan food bloggers and home chefs have been raving about this protein-rich ingredient and its ability to foam and perform just like egg whites for a couple of years now.  In fact, in response to the rising popularity that chickpeas, and other beans, have had this year, the United Nations just declared 2016 the “Year of the Pulse,” in celebration of the family of legumes that includes dry peas, lentils, chickpeas, and beans. Aquafaba is included in this excitement and now its wondrous qualities have finally reached the mainstream cooking world and market!

“When we played around with it, we fell in love with the mayo we made with it. It didn’t have an aftertaste, and it had great texture,” Jeannette Cornell, Sir Kensington’s vice president of marketing, shared in an interview with San Francisco Gate. With texture and aftertaste being two of the major obstacles plant-based mayo producers have been trying to tackle, it looks like vegan mayo just got the uplift it needed. And the news just keeps on getting better. Not only has Fabanaise changed the face of eggless-cooking, but the company has ingeniously set up a zero-waste system for production by partnering up with a hummus producer in Ithaca to acquire their leftover aquafaba, an ingredient they would normally toss. Zero-waste and delicious, this new mayo truly is fab.

Image Source: Sir Kensington’s/Facebook