It’s one of those everyday condiments that most of us take for granted, but did you know that you can really easily make mustard? It’s fun to customize the flavors, plus it gives you a great excuse to eat more pretzels.

I made three flavors, honey mustard, rosemary thyme mustard, and beer mustard, but I’m looking forward to trying more, like a chipotle mustard or a basil or dill mustard. Any fancy flavored mustard you see in a store, you can probably make yourself, so stroll the condiment aisle at an expensive grocery store for ideas.

To make mustard, start with mustard seeds, and liquid. Mustard seeds come in colors ranging from light yellow to black, but you can generally easily find yellow mustard seeds and brown mustard seeds at grocery stores (but in case you can’t, or want to buy in bulk, you can also buy them on Amazon).  Generally, the darker the seed, the spicier the mustard. It also comes pre-ground, in mustard powder, which is the way to go if you want silky-smooth mustard.

Once you have the mustard seeds or powder, you need to soak them. In my experiments I used various mixtures of water, beer, and apple cider vinegar, but you could use wine, flavored vinegar, lemon, or other fruit juices. Even if you just stuck to beer, wine, or vinegar, there are a ton of possibilities.

But there are even more choices once you get to the spices and add-ins! You could add turmeric (also great for the bright yellow color), oregano, allspice, dill, ginger, sage, horseradish, chili powder, or any other herbs or spices that sound good to you. To sweeten it up, you can use white sugar, but brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, agave, brown rice syrup, or even molasses are all options.

If that all sounds overwhelming, don’t worry. If you’ve never made mustard before, just pick one of my recipes, and give it a try. You can experiment more with future batches–fancy homemade mustards would actually be great holiday gifts, but try a basic mustard first.

Ok, so are you excited to make mustard yet? Maybe more talk about soft pretzels will help. I made sourdough pretzels to go with the mustard, using my sourdough starter and this recipe, but following these instructions for a baking soda bath. They puffed up so much that most of them turned out more like rolls than pretzels, but I have a feeling that a “pretzel roll” plus mustard, cheese, and a fake sausage patty will make a mean breakfast sandwich some morning soon.

Before I get to the recipes, a couple of notes. The first time you soak seeds to make mustard, you might think there’s too much liquid relative to the seeds. Don’t worry, they’ll swell up as they soak. Homemade mustards benefit from at least a few days to marinate. The flavors blend and mellow a bit, so if it’s too bitter at first, refrigerate it for a few days and then taste it again before deciding you don’t like it. You should stick to glass and stainless steel for prep and storage, because mustard can react with other metals and plastic. Finally, you can store homemade mustard for a few weeks in the fridge, longer without the addition of fresh herbs or other fresh ingredients.