Specialty Mustard Review: Inglehoffer Cranberry
Originally Posted Friday, November 28, 2014 During your travels in the condiment jungle (oh, it feels so good to say that again!), a skilled mustardeer must always be on the lookout for the, let's say, 'odd' varieties of the one true condiment. Once and a while, you'll be waltzing down the aisle, when suddenly, a rogue cotton-candy flavored mustard will appear in the rough between the Heinz 57 and the Utz. Now, this is where you must take precautions - first, view the mustard. Is it really worth your time? Trick question - it's mustard. Of course it is. Moving on... Next, consider it's functionality. Is it something you would actually use? This is where the aforementioned cotton-candy flavored mustard - other than being a complete adulteration of the mustard family - would fail. But perhaps one has a sweet tooth? I'm not judging. And finally, price. Seemingly unique mustards can often max out on price, when they honestly aren't that amazing. To be safe, see reviews - like Hard Yellow's! - before purchasing. Yes, yes, I know there's an Amazon '12-Pack' thing. It's the only good image I could find. But I'm getting off track. I received this mustard as a gift, so I did not have any choice in the first place as to whether it would grace my cabinet; I had to try it, no matter what. This mustard I speak of is Inglehoffer's Cranberry Mustard, which is reportedly 'great with turkey'. The mustard looks intriguing enough - it's a rambunctious deep purple; the jar is the classically inviting Inglehoffer's type; and who can refuse the proud little bearded German on the side? However, it's just all downhill from there... Opening the jar, you're instantly assailed by an overpowering smell of vinegar. Now, I'm a fan of vinegary mustards, mind you. However, when a jar of what I wanted to think fine mustard smells like a vat of cheap white vinegar, it's an instant turn-off for me. Maybe you're into swigging vinegar, but I'm not one of those types. So with this unfortunate smell in my nose, I went to spread the stuff on some chicken - it's close enough to turkey. Unfortunately, the stuff was off this weird, gelatinous consistency - some mustard seeds here, some chopped cranberry there - it wasn't mustard, it was a bloody spread! Eventually, I pulled through, and I took a bite. Jesus christ, it was weird. First off - just way, way too vinegary. I don't know what was going on in that jar - the cranberries were fermenting, for all I know. The vinegar-esqe taste just overpowered the entire ensemble with a strange, sour-bitter taste. The cranberry was weak, and what there was of it was just sour. Now, I live in prime cranberry country, and this is the cranberry time of year, so I goddamn know what a cranberry is supposed to taste like. This was not that. And then, the actual mustard aspect of it - effectively non-present. The spread would have been better if it were called 'Vinegar-cranberry flavored rat poison', because it would have at least let me know how it actually tasted. Overall, the mustard was really just unfortunate; I really wanted to like it, because it was so unique and different, but after the second taste I just threw the stuff away. I give this mustard 1 cranberry out of 5, only because it tried.
