For the past couple of years, I’ve been seeing a trend among the online community of sous-vide cooking enthusiasts: rubbing meat with mayonnaise before searing it. A parallel trend has also been hitting the grilled cheese forums (there’s a message board for everything), where folks are slathering their bread with mayonnaise before griddling, insisting that mayonnaise produces a golden-brown crust that’s superior to the one you get with butter.

At this point, I suspect that half of you are salivating subconsciously while the other half are quite consciously suppressing a gag reflex.

Even for mayo lovers like me, the image of smearing mayonnaise all over a piece of raw or semi-cooked meat is not the easiest sell. Not everyone likes mayo. It jiggles uncomfortably. It’s nearly pure fat. I get it.

But you should try it! I first let mayo get intimate with some sous-vide steaks a couple years ago. The steaks browned like a dream. Next I rubbed some mayo on my grilled cheese. It’s true: Mayo really does brown better than butter (though these days I use both).