How to make mustard
American Yellow Mustard
I was wondering how mustard is made, so I looked into it and it turns out to be very simple, and it was really kind of fun to make, so today let’s make some mustard! I love all forms of mustard, but today I wanna hone in on a simple yellow “American style” of mustard.
But I will talk along the way about where the differences in variation come from.
Soaking the seeds
Ok, the first thing we are going to need is a clean jar to soak our seeds in. I am not making a specific amount, so this recipe will mostly be relative.
There are generally two types of mustard seeds, yellow/white and black/brown. For the American mustard, we want to use the lighter variation. So I am just going to fill up this mason jar with some white mustard seeds. Then follow this up with some water. Now I may have overfilled this jar, but it still turned out ok. Make sure all of the seeds are submerged.
It’s frankly pretty crazy how quickly these things start swelling up once introduced water. Now we just wanna let these soak for about 3 hours, but I ended up letting them soak overnight
Grinding the seeds
So the next day they should have absorbed a lot of water.
Now that they are nice and plump, we just need to grind these seeds up now, I am going to use a mortar and pestle because it’s what I have. Go ahead and scoop some of the seeds into the mortar, making sure not to overfill it, or it will get quite messy.
To help facilitate the grinding, we should add a pinch of salt. The sharp edges of the salt crystals will help cut the plump skins of the mustard seeds, as well as provide traction for the seeds to not slip around so much. Begin to grind these seeds up, pounding them up. At first, they will start to slip all over the place evading crushing, but as they start to get pasty, it will trap the other seeds and it will become easier to crush.
After a few minutes, you should start to see more paste than seed husk, and it should start to look like whole grain mustard. Once we are pretty confident we have crushed most of the seeds, we can move onto the next step, which is to add some vinegar.
To about 1/2 cup of soaked mustard seeds, I am adding about 2 tablespoons of white distilled vinegar.
No, feel free to add whatever vinegar you want, but the original recipe calls for white distilled vinegar. This vinegar will not only help give the mustard its characteristic flavor, but it will additionally help thin out the mustard paste which will help us separate it from the husks during the sieving process coming a little later. Mix this in, and next, we wanna add the next key ingredient in American yellow mustard, turmeric.
This gives the mustard its a bright yellow color, otherwise, it naturally would be closer to a pale yellow, like dijon. It does add a teensy bit of flavor but is mostly added for the color. A little turmeric goes a long way, and it stains like all get out, so be careful what this stuff touches, unless you want it to be orangey-yellow forever.
Sieving the paste from the husks
Mix this stuff in, and we are ready to move onto separating the mustard paste from the husks. Place the mustard into a sieve over a bowl. At first, I used a wooden spoon to push the paste through the sieve. This worked to an extent, and I was able to collect a fair amount of mustard paste from the bottom of the sieve.
You can see it’s almost there, it’s almost there. To get that last bit of mustard paste out from the seeds, I started to use the pestle and grinding it against the walls of the sieve. This worked really well, and I was able to separate most of the rest of the paste from the husks.
So this is the collected paste. As you can see, it’s still a little thick compared to what most American mustard looks like. I used a little more vinegar to smooth it out.
Now if you tasted it right now, it tastes like American mustard, but significantly more spicy than the stuff from the bottle. The reason for this is that there is a highly volatile chemical that evaporates on the tongue and goes up into your nasal cavity. This is the same stuff in horseradish. Now if you jar this up and let it sit in the fridge for a few days, it will become milder, however, you may enjoy the spice, so It’s really up to you!
Mixing ground mustard seeds with water causes a chemical reaction between among other things, Allyl isothiocyanate and 4-hydroxybenzyl isothiocyanate.
These are responsible for the sharp, hot, pungent sensation in mustards and in horseradish, wasabi, and garlic, because they stimulate the heat- and acidity-sensing TRPV ion channel TRPV1 on nociceptors (pain sensing nerve cell) in the mouth and nasal passages. The heat of prepared mustard can dissipate with time. This is due to gradual chemical break-up of 4-hydroxybenzyl isothiocyanate.
~Paraphrased from Wikipedia
Alright, that’s how you make American yellow mustard, I hope you enjoyed this recipe, and if you did, please consider sharing the video or subscribing thank you!
Bai!
Condensed Recipe:
Ingredients:
Classic Mayo:
1/4 cup of Dry Yellow Mustard seeds
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
1 teaspoon turmeric
Condensed Instructions:
Submerge seeds in water, allow to soak for 3 hours or longer.
Add seeds to a mortar and pestle along with salt and begin grinding. Once pasty, add the turmeric and vinegar.
Seive paste from the seed husks. Collect paste and add vinegar until mustard is the right consistency.
If it is too spicy, let it sit in the fridge for a few days for it to mellow out.
Enjoy!