My Mustard Making Marathon

Mustard. I love all of the mustard. I’m a total sauce/condiment girl, and the obsession has escalated as I have increased the number of things I preserve each year.

The Start of the Obsession

Last fall, we were making some sandwiches with a pile of leftover turkey and bread from Thanksgiving. I grabbed the turkey, bread, spinach, and cranberry relish from the refrigerator … and the mustard. I slapped all of those ingredients on that sandwich, and oh. my. goodness. Cranberry relish + mustard birthed my love for cranberry mustard.

About a month later, I used the Bernardin recipe for Cranberry Mustard to make and can my own, much of which I gave for gifts. Of the jars I kept, I enjoyed several turkey/spinach sandwiches in 2018. Last year I also made the Fresh Preserving recipe for Oktoberfest Beer Mustard, which was a hit among those that I gifted it to, but also for my husband and me.

This started my obsession with making my mustard. Let me tell you though, I don’t think it saves money. Mustard seeds and ground mustard, in the quantity that you need them to make mustard, aren’t cheap! But, the end product is so delicious, not to mention the satisfaction of knowing you MADE it … it’s worth it, at least to me.

Mustard Mania 2018

Anyway, this year when it came time to think about some canning and baking for holiday gifts, I knew I wanted to make mustard. In addition to making the Cranberry Mustard and Oktoberfest Beer Mustard again, I also wanted to make some other kinds too. I ended up adding Tarragon Dijon Mustard and Blueberry Mustard to the collection, and I also made some Christmas Jam with Pomona’s Pectin.

For this blog post, since I took SO MANY PICTURES of my mustard-making process, this post is a photo tour of my projects, with captions. I hope you enjoy it!

Throughout this post, you are going to see a few kitchen essentials in many of the photos. I LOVE my Lodge enameled cast iron pots for making jams and other preserves. The Lodge Enameled 4.6-quart Dutch Oven is the absolute perfect size, but for this “Mustard Mania” I had to break out the larger 7-quart Oval Dutch Oven also (my oval one isn’t a Lodge, but it’s very similar.)

You will also see me mention my Cuisinart Immersion Blender several times. In my opinion, this is an essential tool for canning. I used it for all of the mustards as you will see, and also when I make applesauce, apple butter, salsa, spaghetti sauce, salsa verde, etc. You get the idea.

Gathering Supplies

To prep for the process, I bought Yellow Mustard Seeds, Brown Mustard Seeds, and Ground Yellow Mustard – all from Penzeys Spices. I also stocked up on some jelly jars. First, I put an “In Search Of” post out on my local yard sale group on Facebook for 8-ounce and/or 4-ounce jelly jars. One woman contacted me who was willing to part with 1 dozen 8-ounce jelly jars for $5. Also, Jet.com has really good prices on both sizes, and I bought 1 more dozen 8-ounce jars and 4 dozen 4-ounce jars. Go big or go home, right?

Oktoberfest Beer Mustard

First up is the Oktoberfest Beer Mustard from the Fresh Preserving site – I made one batch with yellow mustard seeds and Shiner Bock beer, the other batch with brown mustard seeds and Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter.

Tarragon Dijon Mustard

Next up, we have the Tarragon Dijon Mustard from the Fresh Preserving site, but I omitted the fresh rosemary and mixed in 3-4 tablespoons of dried tarragon during the final cooking stage.  (You can add dried herbs as you wish without affecting the safety of recipe. Fresh herbs are a different story and shouldn’t be added all willy-nilly.) I also added about 1/4 cup of Zulka pure cane sugar.

My goal here was to replicate the amazing deliciousness of the Arizona Biltmore’s Tarragon Mustard. I’m not sure if I quite managed a replica, but it’s delicious nonetheless. I did just a single batch of this recipe, but it actually made almost twice as much yield as it said. I am very careful in my measurements and following instructions, so I’m not sure how this happened.

Cranberry Mustard

Next up, we have Cranberry Mustard – recipe courtesy of Bernardin. This is my favorite kind that I make and I made a double batch. I talked about this more in the intro, but I seriously can’t get enough of it. I highly recommend!

Blueberry Mustard

The last flavor I made this year was a new one – Blueberry Mustard. I am a proud member of the Food in Jars Facebook Group, and one of the members shared the recipe there. I had blueberries in the freezer and wanted to do just ‘one more kind’ of mustard, so there it was.

The actual recipe is for Blackcurrant Mustard, but I used blueberries instead. (In food preservation, substitutions are ok as long as acidity level of the alternate product is the same as the original.) I also did a double batch of this one.

Christmas Jam

Ok, so the theme of this post has obviously been mustard, but not every single person likes it. (I don’t get it, but hey. Love all people.) I like to take a basket of options to work and let my co-workers choose what they would like to try. So, for the nay-sayers of mustard, I also made Christmas Jam with Pomona’s Pectin. I made this recipe for the first time last year, and it literally does taste like Christmas in the jar. Yum!

I don’t have as many photos of the jam process, because well … this post wasn’t about jam.

Ok, so after all of that, I ended up with five dozen plus a few jars of yummy deliciousness. The 8-ounce jars were used for us to keep, and for gifting to a few family members. But, when I am gifting to people who haven’t tried the product before, I prefer to do the 4-ounce jars. First of all, because it’s still a nice gift yet gives me twice as many jars of product, and second of all because then if they don’t like it, it isn’t as much to waste.

Decorating Jars for Gift Giving

After I have the jars all cleaned and labeled, I like to jazz them up just a bit for gifting. This year I used different colors of raffia and some small holiday ornaments. It made the jars festive and pretty and this was a fun basket to have on my desk at work for the day.

I wrote more about the ways I like to decorate mason jars for gift-giving in this post.

Using the Stuff

How do you use some of this stuff? Well, I already told you how I use the
Cranberry Mustard. The Tarragon Dijon Mustard is mild-flavored mustard, and we will use it on lots of things. My husband ate the whole partial jar I left out for tasting an hour after I made it. I don’t even know if he put it on anything!

The Oktoberfest Beer Mustard is great on bratwurst and other kinds of sausages. We had some of it on these brats that I got from our local butcher, and actually yesterday I had some on a ham sandwich.

For the Blueberry Mustard, before I gave any of it as gifts, I figured I better try it myself since it was a new recipe. I made some turkey burgers and fried polenta cakes (see below.) This stuff rocks, let me tell ya’. I’m envisioning it on anything chicken or turkey, or in a vinaigrette salad dressing.

Last but not least, the Christmas Jam. I always envision making fresh scones or biscuits and putting the jam on them while still hot. Most recently I made a holiday cocktail with vodka, sparkling water, a splash of orange juice, and a teaspoon of jam.

For more ideas on how to use your canned jars of yumminess, I spent a PILE of time this fall compiling a ton of ways to “Use the Jam” – check it out!