Until last night, it never occurred to me that a person could make mustard. It just seemed like one of those industrial kind of products that probably required special ingredients. But last night, I suddenly thought that maybe the container of mustard seeds that have been sitting in the back of my spice cabinet for who knows how long, might have some connection with making mustard. (I know, some of you are probably saying ‘duh’ right now.) I like having a variety of spices, but sometimes my willingness to buy spices I don’t yet know how to use means that they sit around for a while, especially something like mustard seeds, which I’ve never seen called for in a recipe.
So off I went to research online, and I found a recipe that called for basically the ingredients I had. We ran out of mustard last week (we don’t use it very often), and today seemed like as good a day as any for an experiment. My ds6 and I made a batch this morning. It took just only about five minutes and was very easy – the most time consuming part was putting the finished mustard into a jar and washing the blender. 🙂
I’ll share basically what I did here (I added some mustard powder that has also been sitting around, so estimated how much it weighed and put it in the ingredients as seeds) – but I’ll probably experiment a little more next time to see how different amounts of mustard seed and powder affect the end result. It looks like real mustard and is tasty, though it’s a little spicy – my husband likes spicy mustard, but I prefer something more mild, so if this is a plus or not depends on who is tasting it. 🙂
Avivah’s Mustard
- 4 oz mustard seeds
- 1/2 c. vinegar (I used plain white)
- 1/2 c. oil
- 1/2 c. water (you could use broth or wine)
- 1 T. tumeric
- 3 t. lemon juice
- salt to taste
Grind the mustard seeds until they are powdered – a blender works well for this. Add the remaining ingredients, and blend all together until thoroughly mixed. Yields two cups of mustard.
I can’t say how economical this will be for you, since it depends very much on the price you usually pay for mustard, and the price you’ll pay for mustard seeds (I buy most spices for under $1 in the typical little containers, less when I buy larger containers). But for us, having all of the ingredients on hand that weren’t being used anyway, it was a great way to use something up and turn it into something useful!
Avivah
