Whats Your Favorite mustard?

[awbrig]

I have tried losts of them and Grey poupon is still my all time favorite...

Ive tried Pommery, Food and Wine mustards and French mustards but still cant beat Grey Poupon w white wine in my opinion....

Am I missing something...

Help!

[polly]

Don't know if you're missing anything awbrig.

I love hot English. Any brand is ok. On thin slices of roast beef or a spicy Bratwurst...

[John]

I like Admiration Deli Mustard. Tangy and flavorfull; used by many of the fine hot dog places in N.J. I've tried Maille Dijon and didn't like it. Kind of a harsh, bitter flavor. An acquired taste? Probably that I'm not used to this type of mustard. Maybe like trying a full bodied microbrew after drinking Bud, Miller, and that swill.

[Brad S]

Mustard is like wine.

Theirs a perfect match for every food.

[awbrig]

I also didnt like maille brand...Pommery, another french mustard, looked very cool, came in a great clay container, tasted good and had a great seedy texture however I got bored w it...probably since it came w such a large container...

worth having once in a while though

[=Mark]

The mustard served with the cheese and onions at McSorleys in NYC. I figure it's Colemans dry mustard prepared the right way... with ice cold water and a bit of vinegar...

[Fat Guy]

This is pretty much the mother lode of mustard information, as it both contains a lot and links you into more:

http://www.mustardstore.com/aboutmustard/default.htm

When I was working on a story a few years ago for Food & Wine about purchasing gourmet foods online I ordered a couple of cartons full of different mustards from mustardstore.com and did some comparative tastings. Nothing particularly formal or blind, but it was interesting to line them all up. I don't think you can currently order from the place; there seems to be some sort of mustard embargo in place. I don't know what it's about.

In any event, I think you've got to view it as different-mustards-for-different-purposes. Mustard is a condiment. It doesn't taste good alone, at least not to me. So as a condiment it is really subordinate to the food it is condimenting, if there is such a word. Kosher beef franks and real pastrami taste best with deli-style mustard; the balance is correct for that application -- they don't taste good with Dijon mustard from Fallot in Beaune. You need extremely serious saucisson to match up with Fallot's stuff. Some mustard is certainly crap -- like French's -- but for the most part each of the acceptable mustards goes well with something. And when you look at mustards in the same style, like robust Dijon mustards, there is probably a hierarchy. Fallot makes a much more artisanal tasting product than any other I've tried, for example.

It all comes from Canada, by the way.

[Malawry]

In any event, I think you've got to view it as different-mustards-for-different-purposes. Mustard is a condiment. It doesn't taste good alone, at least not to me. So as a condiment it is really subordinate to the food it is condimenting, if there is such a word.

Don't you mean "appetizing," Fat Guy?

I've never considered pairing mustards with foods. What other mustard-food pairings do you prefer? And what mustards do you actually keep in the house?

We keep some ballpark type mustard (I think the current bottle is Westbrae), Maille, and usually Grey Poupon around the house. I hit the Maille more than anything else. We had this New Zealand pineapple mustard...Barker's...for a while, which we were all into constantly.

[awbrig]

thanks a lot fat guy - am looking forward to reading this...

at my last party I had a table in my living room ( appetizers ) that had grilled duck sausage and grilled smoked apple chicken sausage with an assortmant of different mustards including jalapeno mustard, pommery mustard, honey raspberry mustard and champagne shallot mustard...people could choose what mustard they wanted to add to their sliced grilled sausage...

I still like grey poupon mustard on my hotdogs though...i cant eat bright yellow mustard for some reason...

[Dana]

Can't use the ballpark mustard for anything except for potato salad myself. For sandwiches, try Inglehoffer sweet-hot mustard. Especially good with smoked turkey or ham.

[Fat Guy]

I've never considered pairing mustards with foods.

What have you considered pairing them with?

I keep Ba Tampte around as my house deli mustard, a couple of different kinds of Pommery both grainy and Dijon-style, and the rest come and go on a rotating basis. Right now I'm part way into a little jar of mustard from the Ducasse signature collection. Very nice.

In terms of pairings, I mostly use mustard on sandwiches, and I tend to go for stronger mustard on more heartily flavored sandwiches. Like, sometimes I just put very sharp cheddar on dark bread and for that I like a killer mustard, whereas when you get into your milder stuff like chicken the deli mustard works better. For cold beef I like mustard mixed with horseradish. I also use mustard in salad dressings and such, and there's a lot of room to play around there.

Awbrig, to clarify, and I'm not saying you got this wrong I'm just trying to remove any ambiguity, deli mustard is not the bright yellow stuff; it's the grainy, mild stuff like Gulden's -- though it's done better by Hebrew National et al.

[Jinmyo]

It all comes from Canada, by the way.

This is true. It says so in the national anthem:

6th stanza:

"Our must-ard seeds

reign o'er all,

our foie's not bad,

how about that Oka cheese?

"O Canada..."

ediot:

spellgni.

[awbrig]

yo fatguy,

where can i order ducasse stuff?

ill have to check to see if they carry it yet at trotters to go...

what do they have thats worthwhile!?!? kinda excited...

[Fat Guy]

I think you can order it direct and they also carry it at Bergdorf's:

http://www.alain-ducasse.com/objets_us.htm

[Bux]

We generally have one French "Dijon" mustard in the fridge. I'm not particularly loyal, but Maille is the standard brand for us. It wouldn't be my first choice on a hot dog, but you're not likely to see hot dogs here. When I have a hot dog, wherever it is, they seem to have a proper mustard for it.

You need extremely serious saucisson to match up with Fallot's stuff.

Unless I'm mistaken, saucisse is fresh sausage in French and saucisson is dry sausage. While is was commonly understood that deli mustard was appropriate with hot dogs, pastrami and "kosher" salami in my New York childhood, I've never seen a Frenchman serve or ask for mustard with his saucisson. In my earliest student visits to Parisian bistrots I might have ordered a plate of saucisson as an appetizer. There was generally a pot of mustard on the table which I used with my dry sausage, but the management in those little places that never offered butter with bread, always brought a bit of butter for the saucisson. It was one of those minor, but fascinating cultural differences and I found it odd that a people who didn't butter their bread, would butter their salami. I suppose it's one of the things you might miss if you only eat in two and three star restaurants.

This will be a long enough thread of personal preferences, unless of course, someone (I'm not naming names) comes along to tell us that one particular mustard is incontestably the best mustard by objective standards and then this thread will go on forever.

[awbrig]

who cares...let it go on forever...always gives me new ideas and new information like you just provided to me...

I hate when a good thread stops prematurely...if a thread seems to attract attention let it ride baby! - not to mention it was my thread ...wink wink

[Fat Guy]

Bux: I'm talking about the dry sausages. I don't know what restaurant procedure is, but I have two French friends who eat saucisson with mustard all the time at home. I couldn't say whether it's a national preference or not. What do you think are the typical uses of mustard in France?

[Bux]

I may have been thrown off track by the butter brought with my saucisson. I can't remember even being served mustard in anyone's house. Then again, I've eaten in maybe a half dozen homes in France. Far less than a scientific sampling would require. To my taste, I'd prefer cornichons over mustard or butter and have sometimes been served those little pickles. I think of mustard as used in the kitchen more than the table, although as I noted, it's often on the table for use at your discretion in some (many?, most?) bistrots. It's regularly used in vinaigrette sauces and mayonnaises. I like it on hangar steak and fresh sausages. I also like it added to hot sauces for meats and certainly with a choucroute garni.

Actually mustard in France always reminds me of my daughter's first meal in France. She was eleven. It was our first night after arriving on the plane. We had found a nice place to stay and were someplace probably south of the Loire. We wandered into a nearby restaurant that had a respectable 14 rating from GaultMillau and she ordered a chicken with mustard sauce. I don't recall what I expected--a mild mustardy cream sauce or a hot grilled poulet a la diable--but out came a portion of chicken under a massive coating of greasy gloppy broken sauce of mustard and butter. Totally without finess in conception, and totally without visual or palatable appeal. It was basically inedible. Only after the following night's dinner and Troisgros on the third night were we able to make a convincing argument that we were there for the food.

[Bouland]

My favorite mustard is Amora Moutarde de Dijon (Fine et Forte). I buy it in France, although I've found one store in San Francisco that carries it also. It's real cheap in France, less than $1 for a 250 gram jar. In almost every house I've been in in France, there's a bottle in their fridge. The restaurants I've worked in all have used this brand also, but it came out of large tubs.

Amora is a large manufacturer like Kraft. They have a web site at http://www.amora.tm.fr/.

[Fat Guy]

I have a couple of jars of the Amora. The one I opened tasted pretty generic so I used it as a salad-dressing mustard and didn't use it in any straight applications. Bouland, in your experience what do French people typically use mustard for?

[grillboy]

I am partial to pommeroy mustard as I used to live in the town it is made in (Lagny, France). Always have a jar in the fridge. Also keep a jar of batampte (sp?) in the fridge for kosher salami sandwiches.

[Huevos del Toro]

You might also visit the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum. They have 3800 different mustards, although I'm not sure ALL of them are for sale. But you may find enough variety to keep you busy tasting for the rest of your natural life!

www.mustardmuseum.com

[Bouland]

Bouland, in your experience what do French people typically use mustard for?

Wow, I never really gave that much thought — certainly not on the sandwiches they sell in the train stations. In the restaurants it was mostly used as an ingredient. It is certainly served as a condiment for charcroute garni and other dishes but that variety. And it not uncommon to find it used as an ingredient in the common vinegrettes found in bistros and brasseries (although they are probably buying the dressing in a bottle at Metro). I'll have to keep an eye out next October when I'm there.

[Adam Balic]

English mustard.

[bushey]

I admit that I've recently switched allegiance from Grey Poupon to Maille when it comes to dijon style mustard (though I've been known to switch back and forth depending on coupons).

We usually have several different styles of mustard on hand, though, from French's yellow mustard to Nance's sharp and creamy to deli-style brown mustard and one of my personal favorites, Honeycup. There's also a great sweet/hot mustard in a honeycomb shaped squeeze bottle that they serve with fried camembert cheese at our local German restaurant, and it's really good. Sometimes I whip up a small batch of my own using a trusty tin of Coleman's. It's pretty easy, really. Got the recipe out of one of those "Great Gifts from your Kitchen" books that I periodically borrow from the library when I'm feeling particularly Martha-esque (read:once in a blue moon).