January 25, 2022: Mustard
I’m here to talk about mustard. I didn’t think mustard would be one of my first posts this year, but it turns out I go through a lot of the condiment—my jar of store-bought mustard ran out the first week of January. So here I am talking about mustard.
[As I’m writing this, I feel compelled to share that I just ate a piece of popcorn off the couch. My husband loves Smartfood and so do I, but I’m not eating it these days because it’s not “baked from scratch.” Apparently, half kernels left on the couch don’t count.]
Anyway, it turns out mustard paste isn’t hard to make. All it takes is mustard seeds, water, and lemon juice or vinegar. When mustard seeds mix with water, there is a chemical reaction resulting from the release of enzymes and other compounds from the cells of the seeds. It is this enzymatic reaction that creates the familiar pungent taste of hot mustard. The enzymatic reaction eventually tapers off and mustard loses it’s heat, but adding vinegar can help stabilize the flavor (1).
I tried two recipes, and I found they were both easy and got me to the same place:
Honest Food Network by Hank Shaw
What I liked about the first one from Hank Shaw is that the heat of the resulting mustard can be moderated by the amount of time that you let the mustard/water reaction go before adding the vinegar—the longer you wait, the less heat. Even waiting the full 10 minutes suggested by the recipe, I found that the mustard was very hot. I would like to experiment with waiting times, perhaps I’ll try 20 minutes. I love my hot mustards, but perhaps not everyone will!
I tried running the second mustard through a fine-mesh sieve, as the second recipe suggested. It was a bit of a hassle to push all the liquid through, and it depleted the volume of the mustard immensely, but it resulted in a beautiful brown-speckled spread that was well worth the effort.
Toward the end of the week, I used the grainy mustard in a salad dressing that called for mustard. I decided to use only half of what the recipe called for. I’m glad I did that because the dressing had a bit of a kick, but just the right amount.
