What makes awesome French prepared mustard so awesome?

I probably should have posted this in the frugality forum, because I'm trying to figure out a way to do an end run around expensive France, basically.

I'll use Dijon mustard in a jar for my example. If you buy it from Walmart for a buck and a half a 12oz plastic squeezie, it tastes like sour yuck. But if you luck into a similar size jar (13oz) at Big Lots (as I recently did) for the same price, only this one is actually made in France, it tastes simply wonderful -- tangy and delicious. Ingredients are the same in each case -- water and vinegar and mustard seeds and salt. I have bought out my local Big Lots and am down to my last jar.

The difference is, the French have been making and selling Dijon mustard for centuries. I know this, but I simply can't force myself to pay six bucks for a four ounce jar (or whatever the regular retail price of real Dijon mustard from real Dijon region in France is, if you could even find it around here, which you can't).

So I'm looking for insight into what makes the French stuff so awesome, with a view toward shortcutting my way toward better mustard for less money. My theories include:

1) It's the mustard seed. There's a zillion kinds, some of them presumably only available in France. Though Wikipedia tells me they source most of their mustard seed from Canada. I can grow mustard (it does well here, though I don't know how seed is collected in bulk and suspect it requires equipment I ain't got) and I can buy mustard seed or ground mustard in bulk if it's cheaper enough and I can grind mustard seed if I hafta and I'm perfectly willing to prep my own mustard condiment from dry. But I don't have the knowledge to figure out what makes one mustard seed taste awesome and what makes another one taste like Sam Walton's wound dressings in hell.

2) It's the vinegar. They do vinegar excellently in France, as well. I doubt they're using distilled white industrial vinegar or even industrial-filtered apple cider vinegar as is prevalent here. Is it maybe wine vinegar? I can get (or theoretically make) better vinegar than whatever Sam Walton's minions are using. But again, I lack knowledge. And Google, so far, has not been helpful on the factors that distinguish awesome mustard from crap mustard.

3) It's the water. Possible but seems unlikely.

4) It's the accumulated wisdom of generations of snooty French mustard seed tasters and blenders. Very possible, but again not a factor I can work on.

So, does anybody know how to make awesome prepared mustard from bulk ingredients? Anybody got the inside scoop on the mustard masters of Dijon? Knowledge, informed speculation, wild-assed guessing, carefully-hoarded mustard-preparation links -- all are welcome.

D) all of the above.

There is alchemy involved in much of French (or Italian) excellence. But mostly attention to every detail.

You can harvest seed yourself, all you really need is a garbage bag--cut the plant, put it in the bag, knock the seed off. You can cultivate your own from wild seed--taste a seed or two from a plant and only save the ones you like.

I don't know, but I bet there is a lacto-ferment going on somewhere along the way.

Do you have a Trader Joe's near you?
They do some very good mustards without the need to put a 2nd mortgage on your house.

John Polk wrote:Do you have a Trader Joe's near you?
They do some very good mustards without the need to put a 2nd mortgage on your house.

Sadly it's a six hour round trip to the nearest one. I'd have to buy a LOT of mustard.

R Scott wrote:D) all of the above.

There is alchemy involved in much of French (or Italian) excellence. But mostly attention to every detail.

You can harvest seed yourself, all you really need is a garbage bag--cut the plant, put it in the bag, knock the seed off. You can cultivate your own from wild seed--taste a seed or two from a plant and only save the ones you like.

I don't know, but I bet there is a lacto-ferment going on somewhere along the way.

I expect you're right about the attention to detail and possibly even the lacto-ferment. I know I can't rival French Dijon mustard in my kitchen, but I do wonder whether I can't beat the lowest-common-denominator Great Value effort.

Thanks for the tip about harvesting mustard seed -- I've got a few plants that are close

The basic Ball canning book has some mustard recipes if you are looking for a place to start.

I'm guessing vinegar plays a huge part. Did you know there is a single varietal apple cider vinegar made in France. That's right, one apple (Calville de blanc) fermented to cider, then fermented to vinegar. I have two CdB trees, you can bet I will be trying this.

Get thee to a fancy food shop for some vinegar options. I'd start with a French white wine vinegar. Mine sells one in a gallon jug, not precious little $20 bottles. Penzeys sells mustard seed (a couple types). You can't go wrong with tarragon if you have some. This is going to be fun.

You can get a lot of Trader Joe's food on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dgrocery&field-keywords=trader%20joe%27s%20mustard&sprefix=trader+joe%27s+mus%2Cgrocery&rh=i%3Agrocery%2Ck%3Atrader%20joe%27s%20mustard

Not cheap, but the cheap stuff is truly nasty.

You could buy a bottle of wine or champagne vinegar and make a LOT of mustard.

Learning to make good vinegar is on my list. I used to home brew so I've made bad vinegar often enough by accident -- surely the good stuff is within my reach?

But yeah. We're all thinking alike here. Source some mustard seed that tastes good and a vinegar that also tastes good. It won't be fancy French but it ought to be tasty.

Since I do not eat dairy or added oils and I avoid corn syrup where possible, a lot of condiments (especially supermarket condiments) are off my list. The result is that I eat a lot of mustard; indeed I eat a lot of cheap nasty mustard. So this seems worth pursuing.

Thanks to all for the suggestions.

Ann Torrence wrote: You can't go wrong with tarragon if you have some.

I have persistently managed to kill all my tarragon seedlings two years running. Getting some established is very much on my (lengthy) to-do list.

I've made mustard several times. I a make a really big batch and stash in small jars.
Mustard is majorly antibacterial lasts [i]forever[/] at room temperature without sterilisation.
In fact like chutney, it's significantly better after aging.

As mentioned, the trick is good definitely good ingredients.
I've tried to make mustard with the bulk seed you get for cover crops-
not a good idea as it was clearly not a good edible variety and made bitter mustard.

I've used my cider vinegar in mustard. It's fine, but a very different flavour than the Dijon style which usually uses wine vinegar and actual wine.
Good old French-why have just one kind of wine?!
Decent quality wine vinegar is fairly cheap over here though.

Make sure you note that hot water kills any mustard heat and that heat increases with soaking time.
I like hot mustard and tend to soak the seed for quite a while.
Oh yeah, don't forget to rinse the seed daily or it goes gross

Thank you for those tips!

Answer: It's European.

It's hard to admit as an American, but we don't do everything best. We can mass produce great quantities of yellow goo that is labeled mustard, but the French stuff is so much better. So is the German, the Polish, the Ukrainian, the Russian, etc. And it's not just mustard. European chocolates are far better than American candy bars. And beer. And cheese. And cold cuts. And bread. And.....well, you get the idea.

Everyday that I lived in Europe was a taste adventure. Almost everything tasted better than the comparable American item. In America, there is Polish sausage and it tastes pretty much like smoked sausage. And most of the brands taste similar. Not so in Poland. Even in a small meat market, they may have a couple dozen different varieties of kiełbasa, usually labeled by the area that it is famous for that particular type. In Italy every region has its own olive oil, its own cheese, its own way of curing ham or making sausage, and that goes together to make distinct cuisines. The only thing comparable in the United States is on the East Coast, where Maryland is famous for crab cakes, Philly for its cheese steaks, New York for its pizza and Boston for its clam chowder (which is totally different from Manhattan clam chowder). But even that is going away as the fast food industry standardizes cuisine from coast to coast. I think the last holdout will be New Mexico. They are very attached to their green chile, and even a burger from Sonic tastes better in New Mexico when you get it with green chile.

I think you had the solution in your OP, look for the imported stuff at Big Lots. Since those are warehouse clearances, you can get some excellent imported food at very reasonable prices. Unfortunately, you can't count on them to have it as regular stock, so you just have to stock up when you see it.

Mmmm, you just brought back some awesome sense memories from 1988, in one of the last years of the Soviet Union. Grey Russian mustard on black Russian rye bread, washed down with plenty of vodka. Moscow in winter offered few pleasures in those days, but mustard and bread they had DOWN.

I have made his recipe in the past and thought it tasted superior to store bought. .....David lebovitz
It would be worth a try as a starting point.

L Fortney wrote:I have made his recipe in the past and thought it tasted superior to store bought. .....David lebovitz
It would be worth a try as a starting point.

https://www.davidlebovitz.com/homemade-mustard-recipe-joe-beef/
I have made several things from his website and I cannot recommend it enough!
He's an American based in Paris and the recipes are:
-french stuff to make at home
-american stuff to try to replicate in france. He's got a homemade cottage cheese recipe there that I make every so often (here we also do not have cottage cheese)

I also have noticed lately that cheap mustard that used to be passable is now inedible. Not sure what's going on- commodity prices? My only option is to buy the imported german/french stuff every so often and it's shockingly expensive. But I can get yellow mustard seeds, so maybe I'll have to try making some.

I have used ketchup and mustard recipes from "Nourishing Traditions" for over a decade.  They are far superior and you can tailor the recipes to how often you use them.  The ketchup recipe goes south a bit earlier.  The mustard lasts a long time

I've made mustard with garlic mustard seeds I foraged. (Invasive and taking over here, it's  allopathic) it has a bit of a horse radish type heat but I really enjoyed it.

Mustard has been on my list.  I already grow and make my own horseradish.  Since we have the space, I'd like to grow a patch of mustard and make some of my own.  Since French mustard is using Canadian mustard seed, it ought to work - I know from my father that mustard used to be grown in the area I grew up north of Saskatoon.  We have a bit longer frost-free season and more heat units, so I know it will grow - I just have to source some seed.

Condiments are something that I want to explore more.  In my mind, it makes sense to create the things we can that are value-added products.  Things like pickles, relish, mustard, and barbecue sauce fit the bill.  Since it is difficult if not impossible to factor in the energy I use to make something like that, I'm not sure I can say that what we make is less expensive, but the more ingredients I can grow / make / control, the more confident I can be in the end product's "purity".  It is a bit of a challenge to find a recipe you like (or simply narrow it down from the scads that are out there).  My starting point is with older recipes / guidelines if possible.  It also means we can avoid the added sugar / preservatives / additives that aren't necessarily on the labels / etc.

This year, for the first time, we made barbecue sauce.  While we don't normally use a lot of it, we do sometimes cook with it (in meatloaf or pork roast destined to become pulled pork) as well as using as a condiment.  I smoked some peppers to be included in that sauce and we are quite pleased with it.  It's a bit thinner than many of the prepared varieties out there, but that's fine.

It seems to me She Who Must Be Obeyed had made ketchup in a previous year.  We have a number of relishes and salsas we've made along with the aforementioned horseradish.  

Another thing once you've made something like this a few times is that you can adjust it to your tastes.  It is challenging to find horseradish in the grocers here that has anywhere near the bite of mine, as an example.

At any rate, I'll need to double down to find some organic mustard seed in smallish quantities so I can grow some for next year (and hope the flea beetles don't find it all).

Mustard is still on my to-do list but I have been doing basic, sweet relish from scratch for almost a decade now and am still shocked at how much better it is than commercial.
It's not complicated, no exotic ingredients that I could see most manufacturers cheaping out on but the homemade stuff is exponentially tastier than any from the store!
It's not even a matter of shelf time since ours is still much better at 3-4 on the shelf.
I don't understand it but it is why I've been planning some mustard trials. Hopefully, I'll have time next year.

Dian Green wrote:basic, sweet relish from scratch for almost a decade now and am still shocked at how much better it is than commercial.

Amen. Relish and bread-and-butter pickles, I also can't believe how easy (and cheap) they are.

Love mustard, but not the sort that makes eyes water!
Maybe this is worth a try - https://www.thefrenchcookingacademy.com/recipes/how-to-make-dijon-mustard-at-home
Perhaps see how the ingredients compare to those on your favourite purchased kind.   Interesting to know there are different colours of mustard seed - I've only come across the yellow ones that are required in pickles etc.

Derek Thille wrote:  ..... I'll need to double down to find some organic mustard seed in smallish quantities so I can grow some for next year (and hope the flea beetles don't find it all).

Dian Green wrote:Mustard is still on my to-do list but I have been doing basic, sweet relish from scratch for almost a decade now and am still shocked at how much better it is than commercial.
It's not complicated, no exotic ingredients that I could see most manufacturers cheaping out on but the homemade stuff is exponentially tastier than any from the store!
It's not even a matter of shelf time since ours is still much better at 3-4 on the shelf.
I don't understand it but it is why I've been planning some mustard trials. Hopefully, I'll have time next year.

Singling you both out for your Canadian locations.  I'm curious as to how many places deal with flea beetles on their mustards and kale....clearly the Canola industry must be using some pretty hard-core chemicals to protect their seedlings.  I've resorted to growing kale to a fairly decent size before transplanting into the garden in order to avoid the most significant flea beetle predation.  I ask this because a friend from Brazil wanted me to try "walking stick kale", which I think he remembered from times in both Portugal and Brazil citing its tolerance to high temperature.  I showed him the results of my......er..."test" -- where the flea beetles had skeletonized the all of the leaves and he commented on never having seen this issue.  I'm pretty sure our horseradish gets this as well, but just seems to be such a hardy beast that it outgrows the damaged from the beetles and never seems to bothered by them.  I suspect wild mustard has evolved a natural tolerance for the little buggers.

Dian G., I too am enjoying homemade quick pickled slices and relishes, both from cucumbers and from sweet (and even hot) peppers.  A few nights in the fridge with salt water gets them firm, then that is exchanged with a sweetened vinegar mix that is added directly to the jar as it is still boiling hot.  It's fun to include (for pickles) copious cloves of garlic, pieces of carrot, cauliflower, etc.  In a little over a week, it seems ready to sample.      --From a guilty-as-charged lover of hot-dogs + dijon mustard/relish/baked bean condiments.

John Weiland wrote:Singling you both out for your Canadian locations.  I'm curious as to how many places deal with flea beetles on their mustards and kale....clearly the Canola industry must be using some pretty hard-core chemicals to protect their seedlings.  I've resorted to growing kale to a fairly decent size before transplanting into the garden in order to avoid the most significant flea beetle predation.  I ask this because a friend from Brazil wanted me to try "walking stick kale", which I think he remembered from times in both Portugal and Brazil citing its tolerance to high temperature.  I showed him the results of my......er..."test" -- where the flea beetles had skeletonized the all of the leaves and he commented on never having seen this issue.  I'm pretty sure our horseradish gets this as well, but just seems to be such a hardy beast that it outgrows the damaged from the beetles and never seems to bothered by them.  I suspect wild mustard has evolved a natural tolerance for the little buggers.

From a mustard growing manual in Saskatchewan, it seems that seed is coated with nastiness for early emergence, but that has a limited time of effectiveness (flea beetles would need to consume while the plants are quite young).  Later emergence of beetles leads to recommendations of foliar applications of nastiness.

We have some pressure from them here.  The worst I recall seeing are on turnip or rutabagas.  They overwinter as adults here so it makes sense they are a challenge in spring as young plants emerge.  I haven't had so much pressure that I've lost a crop...potentially individual plants.  I don't recall seeing much damage to my horseradish, but most of that is located at the city property where there isn't much pressure.  The acreage is pretty much surrounded by industrial agriculture and canola is part of the rotation - it's closely related to the one type of mustard (yellow if I recall, but could be wrong).

From some poking around yesterday, Canada's is the world's second largest exporter of mustard seed globally with about 75% of the crop being grown in Saskatchewan, 25% in Alberta, and a nominal amount in Manitoba.  USA is the largest market for Canadian mustard seed followed by Canada.  I found reference to three main types grown here - yellow, brown, and Oriental.

Does your location descriptor imply we are in the same river valley?

Derek Thille wrote:

.....Does your location descriptor imply we are in the same river valley?

Yes, outside of Fargo a bit.  They are not growing much canola around our region, but the beetles seem quite happy with the valley anyway and there are plenty of other wild Brassicas around for them to feed on.  My impression is that clubroot also is a problem in this general swath of the continent....Does it affect mustards and rapeseed in your area as well?  Next to flea beetles, cabbage worms, and summer heat that causes kale bitterness, clubroot is the least of my worries! :-/

Cool.  

I don't know the prevalence of clubroot.  I've heard of it, but I'm far enough removed from the agricultural scene that I don't exactly have my finger on the pulse.  I do know someone I could ask - I hope to see her Monday, but if not, Friday.

The larvae of the cabbage white butterfly are definitely frustrating - this year we mitigated somewhat with a floating cover over our brassicas.  Of course, as the Brussels sprouts grew they became too tall and we needed to remove them.  It may have helped somewhat.  Most of the covers I've found are too flimsy out in the open.

As time marches forward, we are striving to build more diversity around our garden area and hopefully we'll get a better balance with predators for what we consider pests.  One of the bigger issue on our property has been crickets...thick as thieves.  We learned a couple years ago that they really like muskmelons.  As we grow and build habitat, we hope to attract birds and other predators (hopefully attract some snakes too) that may reduce pest pressure.  Growing up with monocultures, it's tough to create a wilder garden at planting time and we tend to grow too many things in clumps - tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, brassicas, beans, etc.  It makes it easier to know where things are coming up, but when something like the potato beetles decide they've had enough potato leaves, we learned they are quite fond of the eggplant next door...sigh.  I guess the one thing is to apply what we've learned and implement strategies to mitigate the losses.  If we had our act together, perhaps we'd also grow some sacrificial plants to keep some of these critters farther away from the calories we want to bring into the kitchen.

Derek Thille wrote:...  Growing up with monocultures, it's tough to create a wilder garden at planting time and we tend to grow too many things in clumps - tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, brassicas, beans, etc.  It makes it easier to know where things are coming up, but when something like the potato beetles decide they've had enough potato leaves, we learned they are quite fond of the eggplant next door...sigh.  

 No surprise there: eggplant and potatoes are both in the Solanum plant family, as are peppers and tomatoes.  So even mixing things up requires practical knowledge.

We are very lucky at the moment. Some of my friendly wasps think cabbage butterfly larvae are yummy. I spent time convincing a group of our wasps that I wouldn't harass them, if they didn't sting me. So far it's working well. So keep working on developing a relationship with nature, and I suspect you will find some things that work for your ecosystem. With so many commercial farms surrounding you, it may take a bit longer. Consider bird houses as they may help.

I haven't noticed much flea beetle damage, but it would be hard to catch due to the large amount of loss from the cabbage butterflies.
It was our first summer in this new property and I had pretty severe time restrictions so mostly just stuck to observing.
Everything was started in side and planted out so that would have dodged some possible issues.

Returning to the main subject, I do think any homemade version will be better than the lower end commercial stuff. I think the place to spend the money is probably the wine vinegar. We've been making a tomato chutney for a few years now and I swap 1/4 of the white vinegar with balsamic. It's good without it, but is amazing with the replacement.
The relish and chutney experiences are why I intend to do mustard trials myself. The main reason I haven't gotten to it yet, aside from the time issues, is that I don't actually like Dijon style, but my dad loves it. We just don't go through it that quickly, so it's not a big issue so far.
There was a super delicious, mostly whole seed with dried fruit type I got once in the late 90's/early 00's. It was a smaller, artisan company and they are still around but that one has never been found again. I'm more driven to try for it, but I'm waiting for my trees to put out so I can get the dried fruit. ( I may cave and just buy some since I'm looking at 2-5 of years minimum) It was the only "grainy" mustard I've ever enjoyed and I would love to have an option other than the traditional yellow.

Jay Angler wrote:

Derek Thille wrote:...  Growing up with monocultures, it's tough to create a wilder garden at planting time and we tend to grow too many things in clumps - tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, brassicas, beans, etc.  It makes it easier to know where things are coming up, but when something like the potato beetles decide they've had enough potato leaves, we learned they are quite fond of the eggplant next door...sigh.  

 No surprise there: eggplant and potatoes are both in the Solanum plant family, as are peppers and tomatoes.  So even mixing things up requires practical knowledge.

We are very lucky at the moment. Some of my friendly wasps think cabbage butterfly larvae are yummy. I spent time convincing a group of our wasps that I wouldn't harass them, if they didn't sting me. So far it's working well. So keep working on developing a relationship with nature, and I suspect you will find some things that work for your ecosystem. With so many commercial farms surrounding you, it may take a bit longer. Consider bird houses as they may help.

Thanks Jay.  Yes, it's an exercise in patience...strive to make improvements every year on the ecosystem side and continue to observe and interact.

I was thinking about it earlier this year...between potatoes, eggplant, ground cherry, tomato, and pepper, a rather large chunk of our overall garden space is dedicated to the solanaceae family.  The next biggest chunk of space is dedicated to brassicas.  Add in a few alliums, umbellifers, and beta vulgaris and you have most of our garden.  Oops...almost forgot the legumes - we do have a chunk dedicated to dry beans.  It's tough to separate the families with interplanting when they take up that much space.

That said, one piece of the puzzle is that we are working toward perennials on the ends of the beds.  While these include more alliums (chives and garlic chives), the intent is primarily flowering plants (and if they're edible that's a bonus) to attract more insect and bird diversity to the garden area.  Unfortunately, I didn't get seed down before the snow as originally planned / hoped.

We did build some new beds late in the season and I'll be building a hugel in a different part of the property for the GAMCOD exercise.  Ultimately, this should allow us to move toward lower planting density, which can help with the spreading things out a bit more.

Birdhouses are on the list, although we do have a decent variety of birds on a regular basis.  Among those that will eat insects are eastern kingbirds, occasionally western kingbird, barn swallows, brown thrasher, occasional kestrels, western meadowlarks, and red-winged blackbirds, to say nothing of others that are either omnivores or feeding young.  I do have a number of plans for different types of houses, so do want to narrow down what we want to attract.  The bird diversity seems to have dropped a bit from when we first purchased the property in 2008.  One weekend during spring migration we had seen over 20 species...of course many were on their way farther north.  There are a number of them that I'd need to poke around more to confirm they eat insects, but my understanding is that most herbivore birds feed their young insects as there is more food energy to help them grow to adulthood.

Now, if only I were checking my lumber supply or something else useful see what I have kicking around and get onto building.

Well, that was a tangent.  Needless to say, I hope to plant enough that even with losses I want to be able to have a harvest and start experimenting with making tasty mustard.

Dian Green wrote:Returning to the main subject, I do think any homemade version will be better than the lower end commercial stuff. I think the place to spend the money is probably the wine vinegar. We've been making a tomato chutney for a few years now and I swap 1/4 of the white vinegar with balsamic. It's good without it, but is amazing with the replacement.  

Oooohhhh!

Happily I have a good local small business source in Frescolio.  I see they do ship across Canada.  One of the shops is walking distance from the house (considering I walk the dog an average of >4 km per day, you may want to take "walking distance" with a grain of salt).

Making mustard is pretty easy.  A simple process with infinite variation possible, according to the preferences of the maker.  Sweet mustard, hot mustard, mustard with horseradish cosrse and grainy with lots of texture, smooth as silk, made with bourbon or wine or beer, with pure spring water, you get the idea.

Various bulk seeds, yellow, brown etc, or buy ground seed, or grind the seeds yourself.  To get started, do an online search for mustard recipes!😊