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Seeds

Mustard seeds

Brassica juncea / B. nigra / Sinapis alba

Tiny round seeds (black, brown or yellow) popped in hot oil for South Indian tadka or ground for pastes.

Also called: black mustard seeds, rai, sarson, hardal tohumu

  • Pungent & sulphurous
  • Nutty & toasty
  • Mild
Buying & storing84 recipes

Flavour and aroma

nutty when popped, sharp and nose-tingling when ground raw, slightly bitter. Nutty when popped; pungent and hot when ground and wet.

Heat
Mild
Forms
whole, ground

How to use it

  • bloom in fat · Tadka (tempering) technique

    Heat oil until shimmering (about 180 °C), add the seeds and cover: they pop within 10–20 seconds. When the popping slows, add curry leaves or urad dal. Unpopped seeds stay hard and bitter.

  • soak

    For Bengali shorshe bata, soak the seeds in water for 15–30 minutes, then grind with a little salt and green chilli. Grinding releases the pungency.

  • grind · Dry grinding technique

    Grind raw, never roasted, for pickles and kasundi; heat destroys the enzyme that makes the pungency.

  • Tadka with curry leaves for dal, sambar, poha and chutneys
  • Bengali shorshe (mustard paste) fish
  • Indian pickles
  • Pickling spice and brines
  • Making prepared mustard

Identifying good quality

Small round seeds about 1–2 mm across. Indian rai is reddish-brown to almost black; yellow mustard (Sinapis alba) is pale and milder. Seeds should be hard and uniform, with no musty smell.

  • Not to be confused with Nigella seeds: Nigella is angular and matt black; mustard is perfectly round.

Origin and history

Origin: Brown mustard (Brassica juncea) is thought to come from the Himalayan foothills and Central Asia; black mustard (B. nigra) from the Mediterranean and south-west Asia.. Grown and used: India and Nepal are major growers of brown mustard, mainly for oil; also grown in Canada, Ukraine and Russia..

Mustard seed and mustard oil are long established in India. Popped seeds are the first step of South Indian tadka, while in Bengal and Odisha the seed is ground raw into a pungent paste (shorshe bata) and fermented into kasundi.

Well documented

In masalas, pastes and sauces

Recipes with mustard seeds

71 more