Make The Best Mustard Topping For Your Corned Beef With One Easy Hack

Alongside pickle relish and sauerkraut, mustard is a quintessential condiment for corned beef sandwiches. Its vinegary tang and light touch of heat complements the salty, slowly cured beef and keeps the sandwich moist and juicy. A simple squirt of classic yellow mustard can work, but that's only one of many options. Your brain might jump to Dijon as a quick upgrade, but you can go even further by combining different mustards to give you greater customizability and a big flavor boost.

The simplest choice combines Dijon and whole-grain mustard. They're formed from similar ingredients (vinegar, mustard seeds, and maybe a little sugar or seasoning), so their flavors will meld while their contrasting textures add intrigue to your bite — the barely crushed seeds in whole-grain add body to the silky Dijon. That's just the tip of the mustard iceberg, though, and your creativity can take hold from here as you mix and match any of the more than 6,000 mustards out there.

The easiest way to upgrade this mixed mustard is to switch out the Dijon half of the blend for a different mustard with the same creamy consistency. Crank up the condiment's spiciness by swapping in hot English mustard or the even hotter Chinese mustard. You can go the other way by using Bavarian sweet mustard in place of the tangy Dijon.

If you're after more flavor but don't enjoy the chunky texture of whole-grain mustard, you can keep things on the smoother side. Chinese and American yellow mustard are both made from mustard powder and (despite their geographic differences) could find kinship. Spicy brown mustard has a pulpy texture that sits in between Dijon and whole-grain for a textural middle ground.

Mustard makers around the world have experimented with adding fruits, vegetables, herbs, seasonings, fungi, alcoholic beverages, and more to mustard. Whether you opt for a sweet-and-spicy note with the timelessly popular honey mustard or a funky, truffle-infused mustard, the possibilities go on. Corned beef tastes delicious with a hearty ale, and you can build on that pairing by mixing some beer mustard in with Dijon. Or, mimic the seasonings of the beef itself with a coriander mustard.