Homemade gourmet mustard is so easy to make, yet so economical. On Amazon, herb mustards range in price from $3.50 to $5.00 for a 6 to 8-oz jar. Yet it can be made at home for a fraction of those pricey jars.
By buying ground mustard in a 10-oz canister from Cash & Carry, for $3.49 (pricing similar to Costco), my cost for an 10-oz batch was about $1.15. Alternatively, I could have saved even more, by buying ground mustard from bulk bins at WinCo, at about $2.49/lb, yielding a cost of just under $1.00 for a 10-oz batch. If I had needed to order ground mustard online, I found it selling for just under $6.00 in a 1-lb bag, which would have brought my cost up to about $1.20 per 10-oz batch. Any of these scenarios is at most about 1/5 of the cost of buying commercial gourmet mustard.
Gourmet mustard is a great way to use up those odd bits of liquid leftovers, such as the last of a bottle of white wine, champagne, beer/ale, apple juice, or sparkling cider, by substituting this leftover liquid for all or part of the water called for in a mustard recipe.
The actual preparation for homemade mustard is under 20 minutes, including a 10-minute waiting period before adding the vinegar, and chopping herbs. Bonus -- it keeps in the fridge for several months.
A little jar of homemade mustard makes a lovely little gift, as well. The varieties are endless, by changing up the liquids and mixing in chopped solid additions, such as cranberries, herbs/spices, jalapenos, or horseradish; varying the sweet/hot ratio by adding honey, agave, or maple syrup, and timing the addition of vinegar to adjust the heat; and/or altering the texture by using some whole mustard seeds in addition to the ground mustard.
So, our full menu for the 4th of July looks like this:
- using our fire ring for roasting, we will each assemble our own kabobs on our home-fashioned, marshmallow/hotdog-roasting, long-handled skewers (as seen in this post). We'll be choosing from chunks of 3 kinds of smoked sausage (turkey, beef, pork), small, pre-cooked potatoes, zucchini chunks, green pepper pieces, pineapple chunks, and cherry tomatoes.
- condiments for the kabobs: homemade rosemary mustard, barbecue sauce
- rolls from the freezer, leftover from our reception in early June
- green salad of lettuce and kale from the garden
- this creamy rhubarb gelled salad using rhubarb from the garden
- red, white, and blue mini cupcakes from the freezer, leftover from the reception
- s'mores, of course
