Is spreading mayonnaise on a sandwich too exhausting? Tired of having to open the darned jar? There’s got to be a better way!
And now there is! Scientists who eschewed the boring work involved in curing cancer have come up with a new sliceable mayonnaise, meaning and end to the drudgery of making an unnecessarily fattening sandwich. You don’t even need to change out of your sweatpants.
A Japanese food company called Bourbon (no, it doesn’t make corn mash) has come out with a new line of mayonnaise in slices, like a slice of Kraft American cheese. Dubbed a “sheet-like condiment” by the company, it comes in two horrible sounding flavors: a tuna mayonnaise sheet and a mayonnaise and mentaiko slice, which is a spicy cod roe.
“Bourbon says they’re particularly handy in the morning, since you can slap a slice down on a piece of bread, stick it in the toaster oven, and have a hot, tasty breakfast with just seconds of prep time,” Sora News reports.
And everyone knows that there’s nothing like a nice slice of toast covered with spicy cod fish eggs smeared on it for breakfast!
“If you’re feeling fancy, you can add sliced tomatoes, lettuce leaves or other veggies for some extra nutrition and color,” Sora reports.
Mayo is, apparently, big in Japan.
“Japan is obsessed with mayonnaise—well, their version of mayonnaise, anyway, a brand called Kewpie,” Food and Wine magazine wrote last year. “So it’s no surprise that they’re celebrating with mayo cafes in Tokyo and Nagoya.”
At the cafes, consumers can gaze adoringly at Kewpie bottles strung from broccoli trees, while noshing on vegetables smothered in limited edition Kewpie olive, basil, and tomato-flavored mayo, Kotaku reports. This is at least the second year this mayo has been so revered in pop-up cafes throughout the country.
Why does Kewpie inspire such devotion? The answer is actually pretty simple: It contains MSG. As chef and Momofuku founder David Chang once told Food & Wine, Kewpie is “the best mayonnaise in the world, because it has MSG.”
Kewpie is a little different than American mayo, because it’s made with only egg yolks — not whole eggs — and with rice or apple vinegar and no added salt or sugar. It’s bottled in a slim red-and-clear container, with an emblematic baby for its logo. But the real secret to Kewpie’s cult-following is a healthy dose of MSG.
The Japanese love the condiment so much they even make mayo pudding and mayo ice cream bars. “Calorie Monster Cherio Creamy Mayonnaise Flavor boasts a complex mix of cookie, white chocolate, and mayonnaise that might be just sweet and egg-y enough to work,” Sora reported last year. The 300-calorie treat has a white-chocolate center that is “surrounded by mayonnaise-flavored ice cream, then encased in a shell of white chocolate and cookie crumbs.”
Sliceable mayo joins sliceable ketchup, which emerged last year after a KickStarter campaign. Bo’s Fine Foods created a thing they call “Slice of Sauce™: an All-Natural, No-Mess ‘Slice’ of Ketchup.” Sliceable mustard has, we found out with a Google search, existed since 2012.
And that’s all great with a sandwich or a burger. But what on earth do you do with, say, a hot dog? Oh the humanity!