Tin Mustard

They say necessity is the mother of invention – that was definitely the case with Tin Dizdarevic’s creation. In his former life, the classically trained chef worked at New York City's CraftBar. One day, he ran into a charcuterie snafu: they were running out of mustard. Short on time but mortified to serve meat sans mustard, Tin decided he’d try his hand at whipping up his own. He modeled it after their proprietary mixture of regular and whole-grain mustards, and with a bit of tweaking, it became Craft Bar’s main mustard. With its straightforward ingredients including un-ground seeds, the texture is crunchy and poppy – "like caviar," Tin says. Its hearty texture does as well sidled up next to grisly cuts of grilled meat as it does supporting simple salad vinaigrettes.

Tin Mustard the company, however, wasn’t just whipped up so quickly. The recipe was born in 2004 and spent a whopping 7 years floating from restaurant to restaurant with Tin, gathering quite the following along the way – everyone told Tin he should sell it. Finally in 2011, the Tin team assembled: Tin’s brother Jan would help with marketing, and their mutual creative-professional friend David Ostroff would tackle branding. They hustled to make their debut at Brooklyn’s popular Smorgasburg weekend market. From there it was a snowball effect: collaborating with other makers, word spread about Tin’s amazing mustard, and the company became a well-established staple on the NYC indie food scene.

On top of being a mustard master, Tin works a full-time job – he gets by with a little help from his wife, but he’s got plans to grow his team. For now though, it’s just Tin and his mustard seeds: he uses two different types, yellow and brown, which are soaked in a vinegar mixture for two weeks to bring out the flavor and tame the bitterness. Next, the dry ingredients and wet ingredients are mixed separately; they sit for a week and are then jarred.

It’s a straightforward process for a mustard that seems straightforward – but when it comes to flavor, we give Tin a ten.