Ok Ok Ok. So I've been at a professional conference all week, and I haven't been stellar about doing daily tips every day anyway. Soooo, I'm going to change the term to quick tip and get them up as often as possible. Life has a way of getting in the way. So onto the tips.
So the last post was about vinegar. There are in fact several other condiments you can make for yourself and cut out the middle man. The simplest is probably mustard. Buy some mustard seed (NOT Ground, trust me on this. You really don't want to grind the mustard before making your mustard). Now put the mustard seed in a sealed container with vinegar overnight. This is why you don't use ground. Were you to grind it right away it would be REALLY hot mustard. The soaking mellows the mustard's spicy sharpness considerably. I've always eyeballed this, but I figured for this post I'd get some ratios for people. 5 tablespoons to about a half cup of vinegar is pretty good. You can go any vinegar for this, the home made from the last tip is nice. You can mix in other stuff like wine or probably even beer. The trick is to keep it at least half pickling quality vinegar. The recipes I've seen say this keeps for 2 weeks. That's hogwash. I've talked with people who make mustard and have checked on this. As long as your liquid is at least 50% pickling quality vinegar then you're dealing in microbially hostile acidity levels. If you use all vinegar honestly it keeps . . . well practically forever in the fridge. I recommend making batches of the stuff and keeping it in small jelly mason jars. It works beautifully.
Way cheaper than store bought if you can find a bulk source for the mustard seed (read: Sam's club or online), and you can do whatever you want with the flavoring. Also a nice way to make something snazzy with that half a glass of white wine left over that you really aren't sure what to do with.
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