Make your own Mustard

Making your own mustard is dead simple and delicious! Here’s how to do it.

Fresh brown mustard, spicy and delicious

(TL/DR: Click here to skip straight to the recipe)

My wife loves mustard. Not the vinegary yellow liquid you get in packets at the hamburger joint, but the spicy, seedy brown stuff that’ll make your eyes water and sinuses clear along with the tongue tingling goodness. If we don’t have 10 different varieties on hand at all times, she’ll claim “we’re out of mustard!” and carry on like we’d run dry of one of life’s necessities like fresh water, oxygen or beer.

Knowing how important mustard is to my wife’s culinary health, I wasn’t all that surprised when she came home from the farmer’s market a while back with a bag of brown mustard seed. The size of the bag, 5lbs, was, however, worth an eyebrow lift.

“Are we going into the mustard business?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “But you’re going to make some mustard. I’ve looked it up on the Internet and it’s not that hard. I know you can make better mustard than them.”

I knew that last part was obvious flattery intended to make me say ‘yes’. I had never made mustard and I had no idea what the process involved. Fortunately for her, I also knew that most of the Internet isn’t all that bright, so she was probably right in this case — I could make better mustard than them.

“Ok,” I said. “I’ll make some mustard.”

The Basics

Turns out if you can make Kool-aid, you can make mustard (a win for me. I make good Kool-aid). All you need are some mustard seeds and water. Mix, let sit for a few, and, taaa daaaa… you’ve got mustard.

Ingredients to make simple brown mustard

Fresh mustard is a fiery combination of that’s sort of like lighter fluid and rubbing alcohol and can literally cause burns, so it has to sit for at least a day to mellow before you start slathering your food with it. But even then, basic just a hot mustard without much subtly to it. Fine for salty snacks or adding a little kick to your sandwich, but not really the kind of thing you’d use for seasoning a pork roast or adding some high-classed zing to a charcuterie and vegetable tray.

For really great taste, you want a flavored mustard where the hot mustardy goodness is balanced with something else—honey, horseradish, peppers, Belgian beer, wine, etc.— o make a tongue tingling condiment that tastes far more sophisticated than it really is.

Fortunately, creating flavored mustard varieties isn’t any more complicated than making plain mustard. I have spent plenty of time perfecting a basic, dead simple brown mustard recipe as well as four or five variations, that you’re more than welcome to use as a starting point in your own mustard explorations. (A warning: once you make your own mustard, your tongue is going to be bored by most commercially prepared mustard.)

Making Mustard

The mustard plant has a couple of compounds that start a chemical reaction when parts of the plant are crushed or damaged. The product of this reaction is the oil that gives mustard its pungency and heat (details here).

Mixing crushed mustard seeds with water kicks the reaction up a couple notches so the mustard releases more oil over a shorter period of time. Once mustard has been mixed with water, the heat and pungency will peak within 60 minutes and start a slow fade after that. The key is to stop the reaction at the right time to get the flavor you’re looking for. (We’ll get to that in a minute.)

Types of Mustard Seed

When it comes to choosing a type of mustard seed to use, you have three choices: white, brown or black. White mustard seed is the mildest and the basis for yellow American mustards (it gets the yellow from adding Turmeric).

Yellow mustard can be made in the afternoon and enjoyed that night. Brown and black mustard seeds are considerably hotter than white mustard (fresh-made black mustard can actually cause chemical burns), so they need to sit a minimum of 24 hours before eating.

As I mentioned above, left to its own devices, even the hottest mustard will eventually lose its kick. To prevent that, we need to mix in an acidic liquid like vinegar, wine, beer, etc. to stop or “fix” the mustard at a specific heat level.

Adjusting Mustard Heat and Flavor

Once your mustard is fixed, You can also add other ingredients like horseradish, honey, brown sugar, peppers and herbs to change the heat and flavor profile. What additional ingredients add is really a matter of your personal preferences (and a little trial and error to get it just right for your tastebuds).

The most common fixer/acid used in making mustard is vinegar. It adds a little bitterness and tang that balances very nicely with mustard’s pungency. Using beer will add sweetness. Adding wine will add fruitiness.