Mustard

I really suck at updating this blog. I’d like to pretend that it’s because I’m too busy doing exciting things in real life, but that’s really not the case. I’m going to try to play catch up with a couple of posts here and then we’ll see if I can commit to updating once a week.

In January I was rifling through my spice cabinet and wondered if I was ever going to finish the giant bag of mustard seeds I bought for making Indian food. A couple of days later I was flipping through Savour magazine (my mom got me a subscription… but it’s unfortunately mostly geared toward meat eaters) and happened upon a recipe for Spicy Guinness Mustard. Convenient? I thought so. I didn’t actually have any Guinness, but we did have a keg of BBC Coffeehouse Porter in the fridge, so I thought I would just swap out the beer. Otherwise, I followed the recipe exactly. It was waaaay too spicy, both in terms of heat (and I like hot mustards) and in terms of the dominating flavor of the cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice. It also made a great deal more mustard than I had anticipated. So, I decided to experiment and add different things to the mustard to change the flavor, mostly just sweeteners. The results, according to my roommates and coworkers, were much improved. The mustard’s all gone now and they keep asking me to make more. I think I’m going to try champagne shallot mustard next. Anyway, here’s what I ended up with:

Spicy Guinness Mustard Take 2 (and 3 and 4)

12-oz. BBC Coffeehouse Porter
1 1⁄2 cups brown mustard seeds (10 oz.)
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 tbsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1⁄4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1⁄4 tsp. ground cloves
1⁄4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1⁄4 tsp. ground allspice

Divide 3 ways.

To the first batch I added 3 cloves of garlic (minced and blended with the rest of the mustard) and 1-2 T of really sweet balsamic vinegar (I don’t remember how much, I just did it to taste). This one was by far the favorite of the three.

To the second batch I added molasses (1-2 T), brown sugar (1 T) and some cinnamon

To the third I added honey (1-2 T) and apple cider vinegar (1-2 T). This was the second favorite I think.

Pictures!









The ingredients assembled. It was actually way easier than I thought it would be.

Mixing everything together.










How it looks from the side.










You can see how much of the liquid the mustard seeds absorbed. I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of the finished product.


The end!