Making mustard can be as easy as bringing vinegar to a boil, combining it with powdered mustard and seasonings and stirring it together. Chef Seth Elgar's recipe is a bit different, thanks to the beer and the egg.
"We're almost cooking, for lack of a better description, mustard custard," he says. "We're trying to cook this just until the egg thickens the mustard." (Think Hollandaise sauce.)
Before we get started, let's talk about the beer. When we have chefs cooking with beer on Earth Eats, have you noticed that they almost always use lagers? Elgar likes to drink hoppy beers like IPAs, but he doesn't cook with them, "Because the acids in hops react to heat in very unpredictable fashion," he says. "Even if you cook with the same hoppy beer over and over again, different ingredients being introduced to it, it will taste different." He knows exactly what he'll get when he cooks with cold lager beers -- a sweet malt profile.
This mustard will store for a good long time in the fridge. Try your hand at other condiments, too -- ketchup, aioli and beet vinaigrette.
Ingredients
- 8 ounces beer (I use lager)
- 4 eggs
- 1 1/3 cup powdered mustard
- 2/3 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- 3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
- 1/3 cup cider vinegar
- 2/3 teaspoon roasted garlic puree
- 1 1/3 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne
- 2/3 cup whole grain mustard
Instructions
- Whisk the eggs in the mixing bowl until smooth. Add all the dry ingredients and whisk again to evenly incorporate. Add the remaining ingredients. Whisk to evenly distribute.
- Put 3 inches of water in a pot and place it over low heat. (You only want steam vapor. Never allow a hard simmer/boil, to avoid scrambling the eggs.) Place the mixing bowl over the pot and cook. Stir frequently, scraping the bowl with a spatula each time. You want to cook it down to the point where the mustard coats the spatula and doesn't run. This will take 45 minutes or so.
- Spread the mustard out and let it cool down to room temperature. Store it in a jar and refrigerate.