Review: Nasoya - Vegan Nayonaise and Vegan NayoWhipped

Here is another of my horribly belated reviews.  I am grateful to companies who entrust me with their products enough to send me free samples, or in this case, full-size jars, in order to feed my family and do honest reviews.  I have just been so caught up in the doings of things in our life, that unfortunately, they got put on the back burner too long.  Anyhow, here this one finally is.

Nasoya was kind enough to send me two jars of their new and reformulated versions of Nayonaise: the "now creamier" original nayonaise, and their new nayowhipped spread.  Our family was regular purchasers of the old nayonaise several years ago before we discovered a competitor's brand.  GR, however, always preferred nayonaise.  What made me make the switch to the other brand was that I liked their thickness, texture and flavor; I always thought nayonaise was a bit on the thin side, but it was a good product to have on hand when we wanted a vegan mayonnaise.  So, when I was contacted about an opportunity to review a new formula, I was very excited to give them another chance.

The jars arrived well-protected in a small box along with two lid grabbers to make jar opening easier.  I love these grabbers and use them all the time!  It took a couple of weeks to fully review these products because I wanted to try them in different capacities.  So, for the nayonaise, I made a batch of my Kids Love It! Potato Salad for the Fourth of July, and for the nayowhipped, I made my Macaroni Salad .  We also had sandwiches with them, as well as just tasting them right out of the jar.  Keep reading for more information.

Here they are nestled in their box with the lid grabbers behind them.

Here is the reformulated nayonaise with the potato salad.  You can see that the potatoes are not really coated with the nayonaise, giving away that it still is a thinner product than its competitor.  However, the taste was great, for some of us, on the salad.  I made this for my family and parents, and everyone has eaten my potato salad with the competitor's spread and so could make an honest comparison.  However, I told them instead of straight comparing, I wanted them to tell me what they thought of it completely on its own merit.  Everyone but SR and GR said they really liked the flavor.  SR and GR were adamant that the potato salad was not as good with nayonaise.  I liked it as well and also liked it on sandwiches.  Straight out of the jar, it had a subtle flavor, but I do still wish it was thicker.  But, overall, we liked this.  I'm not going to say we'll switch back to using this full-time, but it is a nice substitute.

What really surprised me was the reaction to the nayowhipped.  I thought that the Blessings would definitely not like the tangier flavor of this formula on the macaroni salad, but all three of them loved it.  SR and GR actually preferred this flavor over the nayonaise.  So, everyone (I didn't feed this to my parents) liked this in the salad.  I prefer the nayonaise in sandwiches, however, just because I'm not a fan of tangy spreads.  Straight out of the jar, the nayowhipped had an almost sweet aftertaste that I could do without.  It also has the same spreading consistency as the original flavor, so the texture for me was not a whipped one.

On an interesting note, I compared the ingredients of the two jars to each other to try and figure out what made the whipped have a different flavor.  What I found was that they had the exact same ingredients listed, just in a different order.  The only things that were a bit ambiguous were "spices" and "natural flavors."  So, I can't tell you why one is tangier than the other.

Again, to be completely honest, which is what I like to do, I won't go out of my way to buy these products on a regular basis.  But, GR was so happy to have them again, that I'll probably buy her a jar to have for her sandwiches.  And, when I make the macaroni salad, I'll use the nayowhipped.