Making mustard

This month I made mustard from mustard seeds grown in the Proeftuin. The recipe follows further down the page. But first a bit of botany.

Flowers of Sinapis alba (white mustard) being worked by a bee. Lower on the stem you can see the seed pods developing. As the plant grows, new flowers continually develop at the tip.

The seeds ripe and ready for harvest. A white mustard seed pod has up to 6 seeds in it. From the volume of two large shopping bags, I harvested about 250g of seeds.

I cleaned the seeds. Initially the broken seed pods end up in the same container as the seeds. I set up a small fan and let the seeds and chaff fall through the air current. The seeds fall straight down, the chaff gets blown away by the current. After doing this a couple of times, the seeds were clean.

To make mustard, I soaked 55g of seeds in 150g of vinegar.

The next day I put everything in a blender and added 1 tea spoon of turmeric, 1 tea spoon of sugar, and a touch of salt. The turmeric is for the yellow color. The sugar is to soften the sharpness of the mustard seeds; you can add a bit more if so desired.

Blend until the consistency is to your liking. If it is too thick, add 1 or 2 tea spoons of water. Put in a mustard glass - this recipe produces ~200g of mustard. Leave in the fridge to let the taste develop for a few days. And... enjoy!