Unlocking new uses for the jams, mustards, and pickles lining your pantry

We all have too many condiments clogging our refrigerator and pantry shelves. How much of the stuff in all those bottles and jars are we actually using? We buy them, then what? TikTok darling Claire Dinhut aka Condiment Claire struck a nerve when she started posting what she does with these flavor heroes. She loves condiments. Claire now has a new book, The Condiment Book: Unlocking Maximum Flavor with Minimal Effort.

Evan Kleiman: Hi, Claire.

Claire Dinhut: Hi. Thank you so much for having me on. 

I spend more time than I would like to admit on TikTok, and I found so many of the items you were talking about so interesting. In a way, I found it even more interesting how many people loved your content.

I think everyone loves a condiment. It's something so unassuming, but they're just the heroes in your fridge, and they really are so personal to each and every one of us.

It's true, they are very personal. Was starting to post about condiments a no brainer for you or did you somehow back into it?

No, not at all. I was working in TV before the pandemic. The pandemic hit, I lost my job, and I started on TikTok because I didn't really know what else to do at the time. My first username was actually “Claire From Where” because it was all about the fact that I sound like this very California, but my father's French. I've grown up a little bit everywhere. 

I was living in London, and the first time I started getting recognized, people would say, "You're the condiment girl, you're Condiment Claire." That kept happening for the next few months so I figured, I guess I'm posting a lot of condiment content. It wasn't something that I had ever planned to do or thought I was doing. One day, I just changed my username to Condiment Claire because I figured, let's roll with it. A month later, I had two book deals. So here we are. I love condiments. 

"If you look at the origins of chili oil or banana ketchup or achar, you get to learn so much about a different place," says Claire Dinhut who took to TikTok to relish in her love of condiments. Photo by Matthew Hague.

So funny. What do you think the connection is between curiosity and condiments?

Oh, I think condiments are like magnifying glasses into different cultures. Just by opening a jar, you're able to travel from the comfort of your home, from your kitchen, from your couch. Even if you open a condiment that you've never heard of before, doing that lets you travel and lets you understand a culture different than your own. If you actually look it up, if you look at the origins of chili oil or banana ketchup or achar, for example, you get to learn so much about a different place. I think that, in of itself, is curiosity.

Is your extreme love affair with mustard a result of your French background or your time in the UK?

Definitely my French background because there's taste and there's flavor. Taste is salty, sweet, bitter, acid, and umami but flavor is also color, texture, smell, but more importantly, nostalgia and memory. So everyone is going to have their favorite condiment that is really specific to them. 

For me, I grew up with Dijon mustard always on the table. Again, French household, so it was the norm, just as important as salt and pepper. So it tastes like home to me. Even if I'm traveling, if I'm somewhere completely random for work, I know that with one spoonful of Dijon, I'll be transported back home to somewhere really cozy and comfortable. It's a flavor that I really love. And every culture can make a roast chicken, but it's what you put on it that makes it so yours. So everyone has that favorite condiment that  transports them back to somewhere that just feels comfortable.

I currently have only four types of mustard, the minimum for me. And I'm not using them very much these days. Can you give me a way to use Dijon? And also, Coleman's Prepared Mustard, not Coleman's Dry. 

Great. I love Coleman's in a salad dressing because Coleman's is a lot more pungent than Dijon because there's no vinegar in it. It's mustard powder and water. And water doesn't diminish the heat in a mustard whereas vinegar does. So Coleman's, that's why your nose, it gets all spicy and hot and you want to sneeze. Just adding a tiny, tiny bit of Coleman's in any dressing, whether it's a salad, even in a marinade or a glaze, gives it a really nice, subtle, sweet heat. 

Whereas Dijon mustard, my favorite way to use Dijon is genuinely in everything. But I would say something that I've gotten a lot of my friends into recently, so I guess I'll use this example, is combining it with the jam. Just by adding, again, a little bit of Dijon, you get acidity, you get heat, you get a tiny bit of spiciness, and you tame that sweetness in a jam. It allows you to use jam for so many different dishes, whether it's a breakfast sandwich or if it's with a quiche or a tatin, anything like that. I love a berry and Dijon jam together. I think it's really delicious.

The word "ponzu" comes from the Dutch and Japanese words for punch and vinegar and pairs with tofu for a quick, weeknight dinner. Photo by Laura Edwards.

That's so interesting. You have a page in the book that I must say I really enjoyed, titled "My Day in Mustard." It includes grainy mustard. One of the things that you ate on your Day in Mustard is grainy mustard and grapes, can you please explain?

I love texture in my food. I really like a pop of something, or a crunch or snap. And even though grapes are naturally crunchy on their own, by adding a little dollop of grainy Dijon on top or dipping it, you get that double pop. I think that it's super fun. The sweetness and freshness of the grape counterbalance that slight spice. Every time you pop into one of the grainy Dijon seeds, there's something special about it. I also think if you cut up grapes in a chicken salad, for example a cold mayo chicken salad, adding a big dollop of grainy Dijon in there too works really nicely. 

I can see myself getting out one of my tiny little effete forks that I never use and sitting down and trying this out.

Please do.

I really love seeing how the minds of food-focused people work. I found your video on how you never rinse out a condiment jar really interesting. In fact, it made me want to use up the jars more. So I had an almost empty jar to play with. That first video that you posted had jars with almost nothing left of pesto, honey, ketchup, and pickle brine. Take us through a few of them. 

I never like to rinse a jar, mainly because I don't think you should ever throw away food, even if it's less than a teaspoon of ketchup, and it forces you to play with your food. By that, I mean play with flavor, because you're forced to combine it with something, since you need to combine it with something to get it off the edges of that jar. 

For example, the thing that I do the most with honey is add milk to it. I add milk to the jar, I let it sit overnight, and the next morning, I'll make, whether it's my matcha latte or coffee, directly in that jar. You get that nice, subtle sweetness from the honey but the milk's already completely taken it over so there are no bits at the bottom. It's just a honeyed milk with a Dijon mustard. This happens many times a week, because I finished so many jars of Dijon. 

Adding a few eggs into it, shaking the jar up and then making scrambled eggs is delicious. Making a salad dressing inside, whether it's you making a glaze, a marinade, Dijon is really, really versatile. Another one, ketchup is a base to so many mother sauces. Whether it's a burger sauce or if you're making Thousand Island dressing, anything like that, it's really easy to make in a ketchup jar.

Dijon mustard is a key component for transforming a classic tarte tatin from sweet to savory. Photo by Laura Edwards.

What about pickle brine? I hate throwing out any kind of pepperoncini brine, or pickles or olives but I can't possibly make enough dirty martinis to use all of those different brines.

Pickle brine is a great one because you can actually brine chicken breast in it. It keeps it really nice and juicy. Another great way to reuse pickle brine, and even olive brine, is by pickling inside of it. If you have some chopped up veggies in your fridge, just plop those directly into that pickle brine. You can reuse the brine, I would say, probably only once or twice, because then it does get quite watered down, but within the next day, you'll have a quick pickle.

I have a hard time with relish. I must've had mostly subpar relish on hot dogs. Can you convince me about the category then tell me about your radish relish? 

Definitely. Again, we all have different taste preferences but I love anything really acidic and tangy and crunchy. That is my dream trio and a relish is all three of those things if it's a good relish, if there's a bite to it. If it's just mush, then I completely understand why you're not a relish fan. I make regular relish but a recent relish that I've been making is a radish relish. 

In France, a really common snack, especially when it starts getting nice out and warm, is radish and butter. That duo is such a staple in so many households. I've been seeing a lot on social media, that people are making these radish and butters, but in really fanciful ways. People will melt down butter then dip the radishes inside, and it'll look really beautiful, kind of like a popsicle. I don't have the time or patience to do that to every single one of my radishes but I really wanted to play around with it and make something fun. I thought, why don't I make a radish relish that takes two seconds to make, and then next time I have bread and butter or anything with butter, I can just add a dollop of that relish on top, and it'll be that radish and butter combo?

I whipped up this radish relish, and it took me a few weeks to get the recipe exactly right, but now I have this hot pink relish in my fridge. Again, if I’m lazy but I want a really delicious snack, I don't need to wash radishes, I don't need to chop them up. I can just bread, butter, big dollop of that radish relish. It's great in any sandwich. I made it with a jambon beurre the other day, so ham and butter. My friends and I did a barbecue on Sunday and we had quiche, we had tarte tatin, we had a bunch of cheese, and the radish relish just got demolished within the hour because you could combine it with so many different things. 

What's in it?

It's mainly radishes, so breakfast radishes and round radishes, a little bit of cucumber just to amplify the jar. Make sure there's enough produce in there, some mustard seeds, then a little bit of rice wine vinegar and some white vinegar.

I'm gonna have to do that. You also talk about jams, which I love. Funnily enough, I don't ever think of them as condiments, which is too limiting. I'm understanding now. Tell me about the tomato vanilla basil jam, since I, as usual, planted way too many tomatoes.

That is the exact reason why I started making this tomato vanilla basil jam. In my home in France, where my family lives, is a farm, so we always have a bunch of fruit, a bunch of veggies, and one year, we just had so many tomatoes, and I had recently made a cucumber jam, which is a whole different thing, but I got inspired, and I was like, a tomato jam would be so delicious. Not a green tomato jam, like you can see sometimes, but a red tomato jam with vanilla. And while we're at it, let's add some basil to it and see if that's normal or if it's a little too funky. 

It was so delicious the first time around that I ended up making it for the entire summer that I was home. By the end of summer, we had no tomatoes left, even to use for salads, because I was making so much of this jam and gifting it to my family, gifting it to my neighbors, because everyone just loved it. Now it's one of my staple jams that's always in the fridge. It works so well with so much but I would say my favorite pairing for it is probably just with a good old aged parmesan or pecorino. My mouth is watering talking about it.

"The Condiment Book" drills down on 12 favorite condiments and their flavors experienced by different types of eaters. Photo courtesy of Flatiron Books.

Is there one particular condiment that you like to push people to try because you think it doesn't get enough love?

Hmm, that's a really good one. I will say that in the UK, at least, which is where I live, a lot of people haven't heard of ponzu, which is a citrusy soy sauce. I think that ponzu is spectacular because it works so well, again, with raw fish or in salad dressings. You get that saltiness and umaminess from the soy sauce but then you really get that, like acidic and bright and light kick from the citrus that's used inside. 

There's a recipe for it in my book but the citrus can be changed. Whether it's lemon or lime or yuzu or clementine, I think it's a really fun condiment for people to try, because then they can also make it their own, depending on the sweetness level that they like or how they want to use it. 

My favorite go-to lazy night meal during the week, if I really don't want to cook, but I know I have to get something in my stomach, I'll do a big block of tofu, and I'll cover it in this ponzu. It works perfectly. You don't need anything else. 

That's one of my favorite dinners, too. 

If you haven't tried watermelon and ponzu together, that is another great duo.