Vietnamese mustard?


 
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Steve Petrone

TVWBB Platinum Member
OK guys...long ago in Memphis, I had a hot mustard sauce in a Vietnamese restaurant. It was pungent like a wasabi paste you get with sushi. After a few meals, I enquired...they gave me a styrofoam coffee cup full of pale yellow powder. Just mix with water for sauce. It has been years since I had it but since I did not cook Vietnamese, I had to find a good use for it.

It was fabulous on grilled chicken. Any ideas what I had?

It is another type of heat that would work well with many of our bbq recipes.
 
Yes. You had mustard made with Chinese mustard powder. Though it looked yellow, it is actually made with the more potent brown mustard seed common (along with black mustard seed) in SE Asia, China, and the Indian sub-continent.

The brown seed is dried well enough so that when crushed it forms a powder. To get a hot, pungent condiment all you need to do is add cold water, stir it briefly, and wait 20 min for the reaction of the compounds in the seed with the water to reach their full potential. After the peak is reached the sharpness will slowly decline. You can arrest the decline (or at least slow it substantially) by refrigeration. You can also add an acid though that will change the flavor somewhat.
 
You can use Coleman's English mustard powder absolutely interchangeably, IMHO. Great stuff! Don't water it down with vinegar.
 
You can. It's not quite the same (Coleman's mixes mellower white mustard seed powder with brown) but it is a reasonable substitute. Use cold water--hot won't give you the same bite--and heed Susan: No vinegar.
 
Aha! Now I'll be on a quest for true Chinese mustard powder (cuz the stuff we've always gotten in the Asian section---you know, it used to be all Chun King, lol) tasted just the same as the Coleman's to my admittedly untrained palate.
 
Thanks Susan, Kevin and Rita. I found S&B Mustard at my first stop, a Vietnamese market.
This is it!

2t mustard powder
3t cold water
mix

I also added 1t honey. It was excellent on grilled chicken. This has other possibilities I'll have to explore. Thanks all.
 
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