Cook it Fresh

Homemade mustard on the left, Inglehoffer stone ground mustard on the right

Mustard is my favorite condiment and we use it a lot at our house.  We have it on sandwiches, burgers, and bratwursts and I add it to salad dressing and sometimes even homemade macaroni and cheese.  Our refrigerator usually holds no less than 3 kinds of mustard at any given time and I always love trying new varieties.   I have wanted to try my hand at making homemade mustard for awhile but have just never believed that it would turn out as well as the great mustards you can buy in just about any supermarket.  I decided to take the plunge into mustard making this week in honor of my new, mustard hued kitchen, at least that was my excuse!  The internet has many, many mustard recipes and they range from the overly simple (just vinegar and mustard powder) to complex recipes that take lots of ingredients.  I ended up taking a middle ground by combining a few different recipes that sounded good and fairly easy and hoped for the best.  I found it hard to find some of the ingredients in the recipe below, at least in the quantities specified.  If you live in Colorado, I highly recommend Savory Spice Shop (located in Boulder, Denver, and Colorado Springs) for hard-to-find spices or buying spices in large quantities.  They had all the ingredients I needed at very reasonable prices and the spices are noticeable fresher than those found in the grocery store.

Homemade Cider Mustard

The beauty of homemade mustard, as with most homemade recipes, is that it is endlessly adaptable.  You can add some horseradish or hot sauce if you like a very spicy mustard or use a milder mustard powder and add some honey if you prefer something less spicy.  You can substitute wine for the beer, or just use extra vinegar if you want a more tangy, non-alcoholic version.  There are so many possibilities and I plan on trying out some of them in the future, the recipe below is just a guide!   I used cider vinegar and a lighter ale (Blue Moon Honey Moon Summer Ale) for this recipe because I wanted it to have a milder, sweeter flavor but feel free to experiment and please, let me know what recipes you come up with.

1/4 cup yellow mustard seeds
1/4 cup brown mustard seeds
3/4 cup cider vinegar
2/3 cup hard cider
1/2 cup mustard powder combined with half a cup water, sit 20 min.
2 teas. Sugar
1/4 teas. Tumeric
1/2 teas allspice

1. Combine mustard seeds with vinegar and cider and allow to sit 48 hours so that the seeds can soften and absorb the flavors.

2. In a large bowl, combine the soaked seeds and liquid with the rest of the ingredients and whisk together.  The mustard will seem very watery at this point, but don’t worry it will thicken during the next steps!

3.  Pulse the mustard in a food processor a few times until the seeds are broken up and the mustard has thickened. Store in a tightly sealed container.  This mustard will keep for one month, refrigerated, and the flavor will become stronger the longer it sits.

I started this recipe and had people over for a sausage and kraut lunch on Wednesday to compare the homemade mustard to my favorite store bought brand:  Inglehoffer stone ground mustard.  This short time frame means that the mustard had only half a day to “age” before we ate it, but that might be a good thing as it was just about the hottest mustard I have ever tasted!  Seriously, this mustard was so hot that my dad asked me how much horseradish I had added to it (answer: none).  I thought it tasted like horseradish too, but that was just the pure, hot mustard flavor even though I used “regular” heat mustard powder as opposed to “hot”.  I was surprised, too at how little tang the mustard had, given that it contained almost a cup of vinegar.  Compared to the store bought mustard, I must say that the homemade did not have a very nuanced flavor.  About the only thing I tasted was the heat and I missed the sharp, vinegary tang and slight sweetness of store bought mustard.  Homemade mustard obviously takes a long time to make when you take into account the soaking of seeds, but there is actually very little hands-on work.  I will be trying this experiment again, but with a mild mustard powder, a higher ratio of vinegar to ale, and maybe a little honey added to mix to give the mustard a sweet edge.  The homemade mustard was a little cheaper than the store bought version, given the fact that it made twice the amount that a usual store bought bottle holds.

Bottom Line:   Although I am sure I will make homemade mustard again in the future, and try to adapt the recipe more to my tastes, store bought mustard is still my favorite.  If you like very hot, spicy mustard then you will love the recipe above.  However, the homemade mustard was in no way better than store bought and certainly takes a lot more time and effort to produce.