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See why.Brown Mustard
Products awash in vinegar didn’t cut the mustard with our tasters.
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When it comes to mustard, yellow tends to hog all the glory, zigzagging up ballpark franks and cornering the market on pretzel-stand squeeze bottles. But here at the test kitchen we like brown mustard, too, for its spicy, robust flavor. Unlike the yellow stuff, which gets its bright, mild character from white mustard seeds, brown mustard is made from the smaller, hotter brown seeds along with some of their bran, the tough outer layer of the seed that gives the mustard its speckled look. We use brown mustard to pack a punch when we’re eating rich foods like pastrami, ham, or eggy breads.
Which mustards didn’t pass muster? Our tasters expected their spicy brown mustard to be, well, spicy. We wanted to feel the burn, and in every taste test, hotter mustards scored higher. Mustard’s heat is a defense mechanism of the mustard plant against insects looking for something to chomp on; when its seeds are crushed, enzymes are freed and start to convert dormant chemicals into hot mustard oil. We measured the amount of mustard oil in each product, but surprisingly, the results didn’t line up. Some of the hotter products that we preferred had plenty of mustard oil, but so did the product that ranked lowest, which tasters called “weak” and “wimpy.” If we liked hotter mustards, why did one of our lowest-ranked products contain so much of the very compound that makes mustard hot?
A couple of the mustards boast “#1 grade mustard seed” on their ingredient lists, so we turned first to the quality of the seeds. But when we looked into it and found that all the mustards that we tested are made with top-grade seeds, whether stated or not, we realized that it was time to examine the mustard-making process. Mustard is created by mixing crushed seeds with a cold liquid (a cooler temperature is required to correctly activate the enzymes). Then an acid is added to slow the formation of mustard oil, keeping the mustard from becoming blow-your-head-off spicy. The most common acid, used by every product that we tasted, is vinegar because of its three-pronged effect of taming heat, prolonging shelf life, and adding tang. But when there’s too much vinegar, the formation of mustard oil is slowed too much, and the condiment loses its characteristic burn.
If more vinegar means less heat, we now understood why some products with lots of mustard oil fell flat and why tasters consistently rated overly tart products low in both heat and overall flavor. We measured each mustard’s acidity to get at vinegar content and found that more acidic products, usually those with more vinegar, rated lowest in our taste tests. In sum: Mustards with both a high percentage of m...
Everything We Tested
Recommended
We liked Gulden’s “bright,” “classic” and familiar taste. On hot dogs, it was “complex” and “balanced” with a “smooth” texture that “goes great with the meat.” As one taster summarized, it’s “what brown mustard should taste like.”
“Tastes like what i grew up with,” said one taster. With “lots of bite” and “bold,” “complex” flavors, French’s earned high marks for its “full-frontal spiciness” and “punch of mustard heat.” It led the pack on hot dogs, where we liked its “thick” and “creamy” texture.
A curveball in our lineup, Beaver was the only mustard we tested with whole seeds and an unusual ingredient list, full of additions like eggs, corn syrup, artificial flavors, and xanthan gum. Because of these characteristics, some of our tasters felt that this product was “a different animal.” But most loved the “pleasant pop” of seeds in this “full-flavored,” “well-balanced,” “sweet and savory” mustard.
Koops’ “smooth,” “uniform” texture won many fans, and most tasters favorably likened its “mild” and “light” flavor to that of yellow mustard; it was similar to “what you would expect at any hot dog stand.” However, a few tasters faulted its “simple” taste for being “barely there.”
“Sweet,” “fruity” notes earned this “mild” mustard points with tasters who thought that its “mellow” flavor “might be good for kids.” A few tasters were put off by its “thick,” “hummuslike” consistency.
Recommended with reservations
We picked up on an unusual array of flavors in this mustard, from “warm baking spices” like clove, allspice, and nutmeg to “curry,” “minerals,” and “berry flavors.” While we’ve nothing against these flavors, per se, our tasters did find them out of place in a mustard.
Not Recommended
“I’m not sure i’d know this was mustard without seeing it.” “Whoa—vinegar superoverload!” With relatively high acidity and wimpy heat, this mustard tasted out of balance. While a few testers favorably compared its consistency to that of “stone-ground,” most found it “mealy,” “sandy,” and “gritty.”
Reviews you can trust
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