2d ago

Mustard

143 comments

and of all the amazing mustards available, she had to get stuck with one of the most shitty vinegary last-resort-only option
- As a mustard lover, heinz isnt even close to the actual worst one, which is the whole foods brand mustard. Its made with apple cider and it is revolting. The best widely available yellow mustard to just grab in a store is plochman's.
  
  There are so many awesome fancy mustards out there, but if I want the ballpark standard yellow mustard, I usually just go for French’s. It’s the same principle with ketchup. When I want ketchup I just want Heinz. If I go to a restaurant and they are all proud of their “house made” ketchup, it is probably going to be too sweet or tomatoy or whatever. Just give me what I grew up with and don’t mess with it.
  That said my wife has been making mustard at home recently and it is amazing. It’s not yellow mustard but a tangy grainy mustard that is great.
  
  Most restaurants make their ketchup with canned tomato puree. You can’t start there and expect to get a prizewinning sauce. Equally, I can’t get behind any store shelf bottles of ketchup. They all have this metallic taste to them. It’s just funny how universally picky people are about their tomato sauces, myself included.
  
  I think I have never been somewhere where they make their own ketchup. And I think there is a pretty good reason for that too: whoever orders ketchup is not going to expect something they made, will not have crazy standards and might even want the known taste of regular ketchup.
  
  In all likelihood, you have. The restaurants I used to work at would refill name brand ketchup bottles with their own. The recipe is simple and cheap. Far cheaper than buying name brand, which meant better margins. When people said that it tasted off, you’d just look at the label, sigh, and say “oh, sorry about that. Let me get you a different one.” And then refill it and bring it back.
  
  Hahaha... seriously, that would be illegal, breaking several laws. Nobody here does that, ketchup is way too cheap to risk such things.
  
  Maybe things have changed in recent years, but I doubt they’ve changed that much. Given all of the jokes about restaurants going out of business without illegal immigrants, legality still seems secondary to profitability
  
  Hm I can mostly speak for the EU. What I have seen is something like non-Nutella in a Nutella jar at a crepe booth in Thailand :D
  
  Was it still a chocolate/nut paste? Or was it something sinister, like vegemite?
  
  It was with cacao, but really badly done, like a bit of oil with cacao and sugar. Ugh.
  
  havent tried plochmans but i will. for emergency widely available mustard i typically recommend frenchs dijon (NOT the "chardonnay" dijon)--it's been so long i don't even know if they make it anymore, but it should say something like "our boldest dijon ever" on the label
  usually i stick with colman's tins of just mustard flour and make it myself

143 comments