Bottom line: A weak little computer fan is just right for winnowing mustard seed. Optionally, roll the seeds down a tray to separate out the last little bits of chaff.
After cleaning some mustard seed in that fashion, I ground it in a cheap spice/coffee grinder, then used a recipe that promised to produce something like French’s yellow mustard.
I achieved neither the color nor the consistency of French’s. But I think it’s recognizably mustard.
I’ll need to wait a few days for the taste test.
At the very least, this went a lot better than last year. A box fan is way too large, and way to strong, for winnowing tiny mustard seeds.
Winnowing mustard, a game of diminishing returns.
After an initial pass with a coarse sieve, the mustard seeds remain mixed with little bits of organic trash (above). The trash must now removed by any means possible. For me, this meant a combination of sieving, winnowing, and finally “boarding” the mustard seed.
Sieving is fast, but it only gets the big stuff. Use the finest sieve you own that will allow the seed to pass. I considered making a yet-finer sieve (by drilling tiny holes in a milk jug), but decided it wasn’t worth it.
Of all the winnowing contraptions I saw on YouTube, the one that looked like it was on the right scale for mustard seed used a funnel to control the rate of flow of the seed past a running computer fan. The fan appeared just strong enough to remove most of the trash, but not strong enough to blow the seed all over.
So I took the gist of that — funnel plus computer fan — and rigged up this:
The only non-obvious piece is the paper towel. That’s because the seeds will bounce if they hit something hard.
This is incredibly easy to use. Hold the funnel, use your pinky to cover the end, fill it, position it in front of the fan, then lift your pinky and and let ‘er rip. Pour the clean(er) seed back into the measuring cup. Clean up and repeat. For a given number of passes through the air stream, the pile of chaff gets smaller as the seed gets cleaner.
I probably could have just kept passing it through the breeze of the fan, but it seemed like the denser organic trash — little bits of seed-pod-stem, mostly — seemed to pass through right along with the seed. To the point where, if I’d positioned the funnel so that the stems passed beyond the edge of the container, I’d end up losing a lot of seed.
In other words, winnowing will separate the lighter material. It won’t efficiently separate things with roughly the same density and aerodynamic properties as your seed.
For the final cleaning, I decided to “board” the seed. Pour a line of seeds and chaff at one end. Tilt the tray a bit, tap it, and some seed will roll to the bottom. Sweep the mass of seeds back to the starting position, tap some more. Repeat until all the seed is at the bottom. This step was far too tedious to do for a large quantity of mustard seed, but didn’t take too much time for the few ounces I’m working with.
There’s the final product, above right. Any remaining stuff you see on the right-hand side above is literally attached to the seeds. So I figure it’s OK to eat, even if it’s not particularly decorative.
Making plain yellow mustard.
Not lookin’ for your fancy Dee-John mustard. Your seedy mustard. Your honey mustard. Your Gulden’s spicy brown mustard. Your flavored mustard.
None of that. I want French’s yellow mustard. I used the recipe on Serious Eats.
First I ground four tablespoons (two fluid ounces) of mustard seed in a cheap, whirling-blade spice grinder. I ground it until the mustard seed started to heat up. This produced about four fluid ounces of ground mustard. It is nowhere near as fine as the flour-like mustard powder you would buy at the store.
Then I followed the recipe, more-or-less. And got mustard, more-or-less. At least, it looks like a rustic mustard.
I need to let this sit in the fridge for a few days before I can give it a taste test. Many internet sources warn that freshly-cooked mustard is bitter. That’s certainly true of mine, and I hope that’ll sort itself out in a few days.
