Sweet Keto Dill Mustard Sauce

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This exceptionally flavorful, keto-friendly sauce or dressing is made with only 5 ingredients, and it’s ready in a couple of minutes. As this sauce is a keto twist of a classic Nordic mustard sauce that is served with gravlax, this piquant condiment is a perfect companion to fish — especially to lox, gravlax, cold-smoked salmon, or any cured or raw fish (those we enjoy ample amounts here in the Nordic countries!).

This sauce also accompanies perfectly pork and other mild-flavored meats. One of my favorite ways to serve the sauce is over thin cucumber slices — though it makes a perfect salad dressing, too. Just try this unique condiment and find your favorite way to use it!

How to prepare the Sweet Keto Dill Mustard Sauce

This flavorful sauce is made in the same way as mayonnaise — except you don’t have to be that strict with beating since there is no danger that this sauce would separate as there are no eggs. However, it’s a good idea to add the oil little by little and whisk all the time vigorously while adding it. Like this, you’ll end up with a smooth and thick sauce.

If you want to make the preparation even easier and faster, use a blender to blend all ingredients together into a thick sauce. However, keep your eye on the sauce, it might turn into mayonnaise or otherwise too thick just in a couple of seconds. Since I prefer this condiment as a sauce rather than as mayonnaise, I prepare it by hand-whisking with my favorite gravy whisk.

But let’s take a look at how to prepare this keto condiment:

First, choose your mustard. You can use basically any unsweetened mustard — that has preferably no food additives or preservatives, that is. Here, I’ve got one Finnish version of Dijon mustard, one French Dijon mustard, and American-style yellow mustard. All of these suit perfectly this sauce. (Btw, I’ve used the Finnish Dijon version here in these photos).

Add 1/4 cup (60 ml) mustard to a small bowl.

Add also 1/4 cup (60 ml) — or to taste — Sukrin Syrup. Now, if you cannot find Sukrin Syrup (they actually discontinued the Clear Syrup that I’m using here, but they still have the Gold Syrup), you can use any other non-caloric natural sweetener that dissolves well in cold dishes. Try, for example, maple-flavored sugar-free syrup, liquid stevia, powdered erythritol, monk fruit; basically any syrup, liquid or powder, NOT granules or crystals as those don’t dissolve well. Note that maltitol-based sugar-free syrups might cause stomach discomfort and rise blood sugar, so I don’t recommend those.

By the way, if you use the Sukrin Gold Syrup, it has the same sweetness than the Sukrin Clear Syrup that I’m using here. If you use for example stevia, the needed amount is minuscule compared to syrup, so be careful and start with a small amount of sweetener and taste the sauce before adding more.

Finally, add 1 tablespoon raw apple cider vinegar.

Whisk…

…until well combined.

Start adding 1/3 cup (80 ml) MCT oil or light olive oil little by little, all the time vigorously whisking.

Once you’ve added all the oil, you should have a thick and smooth sauce.

Now the icing on the cake (well, sort of!): add 2-3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill.

Whisk…

…until well combined. Cover, and refrigerate for a few hours to let the flavors mingle.

Serve, for example, with gravlax or lox.

Yum!

 

How I came up with this keto sauce recipe

The weather is still hot here in Finland, so I ultimately wanted to develop and post a recipe that doesn’t need any heating. Moreover, I have been swamped with work, so the recipe should also be quick, easy, and very simple to make, I thought.

Like Swedes, also we Finns are avid celebrants of Midsummer (or juhannus, as we call it here in Finland eli juhannusterkkuja vaan kaikille suomalaisille! Please don’t try to translate that with Google, you’ll get a crazy result!). So, Midsummer is just around the corner, actually this weekend when I’m writing this post. Therefore, I thought I should find a recipe that is perfect for the Midsummer celebrations as well.

Many times, people eat different types of fish, especially herring, on Midsummer. Non-ketoers eat potatoes with fish. (I wonder how many years it is since I’ve eaten this tasteless starchy tuber… Seriously, people, I wonder why this bland and pale vegetable is so popular!)

Anyway, I prefer to eat gravlax quite often, also during Midsummer. I’m pretty strict with my gravlax and that it doesn’t have any added sugar or preservatives, and the fish is preferably organic, not farmed.

Especially in Sweden — but also in Finland — gravlax is often eaten with a sweet mustard sauce that also contains dill. From that, I got the idea to develop my own keto version of this popular mustard sauce, known as hovmästarsås in Sweden and hovimestarinkastike in Finland.

As a base, I naturally wanted to use unsweetened mustard like Dijon and add natural, non-caloric sweetener to provide that sweet taste the sauce required. I used quite a long time for pondering over the sweetener. What would be the best choice for this sauce?

My favorite sweetener, erythritol crystals, was out of the question. The crystals wouldn’t dissolve properly but just remain as tiny sandy particles. That didn’t sound too appetizing. I thought powdered erythritol might have been an option, but as soon as I saw a bottle of fiber syrup in my kitchen, I knew it was the perfect sweetener for this sauce. Well, stevia would work for sure as well, but at least I wanted to try out the fiber syrup now.

Actually, I wanted to use Sukrin Golden Syrup, but as I was running out of it, I chose the Sukrin Clear Syrup. The syrup is not very sweet, about 60% of the sugar-filled syrup — but as I didn’t want to make overly sweet sauce anyway, I thought the syrup’s modest sweetness is enough. However, when I had developed this recipe, I noticed that the company has discontinued the Clear Syrup. They still do manufacture the Golden Syrup that would also be a great option here in this recipe — it’s actually even more flavorful. Anyway, this issue made me once again mad: when you use a certain product in your recipes and your blog posts, you can be sure that the manufacturer will discontinue the product at some point. How downright frustrating!

In addition to mustard and sweetener, I needed vinegar, oil, and fresh dill. For vinegar, I chose raw apple cider vinegar — not only because it has health benefits, but also because I like its fruity and mild taste.

The oil needed to be as neutral as possible. On a clean keto diet, all vegetable seed oils like canola oil, sunflower seed oil, soy oil, corn oil, etc. are entirely out of the question. These unnatural oils are practically rancid when you buy them from the store. Moreover, they are made in a factory, and the manufacturing process involves heating and poisonous chemicals. There is nothing natural in these oils! Your body doesn’t find them natural either, and easily develops low-grade inflammation if you consume large amounts of these oils that are rich in omega-6 fatty acids.

So, there are better oils that can be used on a keto diet. Extra virgin olive oil is one of the best oils there exists, however, its flavor is far too strong for a sauce like this. Extra virgin coconut oil would be a neutral-tasting oil, but it solidifies at room temperature, so it wouldn’t be suitable for a sauce.

I concluded the best oils for this keto sauce recipe would be MCT oil and light olive oil. To be honest, MCT oil is also factory-made, but it doesn’t do harm for you, and it’s used liberally on a keto diet. Quite the opposite: it actually boosts the production of ketone bodies — those ketone bodies cause the state of ketosis that is your goal on a keto diet.

Light olive oil would also be another quite neutral-flavored option, but it is also somewhat processed — though far, far from that what the vegetable seed oils are. Anyway, MCT oil tastes completely neutral — light olive oil does have some flavor, so I decided to do my first tests with MCT oil.

Now, I had all the ingredients. Next, it was time to calculate the amounts. For my first experiment, I gathered 1/4 cup (60 ml) Dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon Sukrin Clear Fiber Syrup, 2 tablespoons raw apple cider vinegar, 1/3 cup (80 ml) MCT oil, and 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill.

First, I combined the mustard, syrup, and 1 tablespoon of the vinegar. To my taste, there was now enough vinegar, so I skipped the second tablespoon. However, the amount of syrup was far too little. I could taste hardly any sweetness in the sauce. I added another tablespoon of syrup — and yet another. After adding still one tablespoon, I was happy with the sweetness. To achieve this, I had used altogether 1/4 cup (60 ml) Sukrin syrup.

To get a thick sauce, I started adding oil little by little, whisking all the time vigorously. I didn’t know if I was going to end up with thick mayonnaise or just a runny sauce — or something in between.

Luckily, I ended up in something in between, i.e., quite thick sauce that was pourable. It was just the consistency I had hoped! I still added 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh dill to perfect the sauce.

I and my family – also my parents – liked a lot of the condiment. The taste was sweet and piquant, and the dill accompanied the sauce wonderfully. A perfect keto sweet dill mustard sauce (aka Keto hovmästarsås or Keto hovimestarinkastike) had born!

Here’s the recipe for you to enjoy:

Nutrition information	In total	Per tablespoon
Protein	3.9 g	0.3 g
Fat	86.1 g	6.2 g
Net carbs	5.7 g	0.4 g
kcal	878 kcal	63 kcal

 

 

General prattling

This week we have proceeded well with our Ketokamu activities. We would like to get an attractive logo, so we set up a contest on 99designs. Well, the designs we received were not really of high quality — but at least we got many good laughs when the designers had funny typos in the Ketokamu text, making the meanings completely different in Finnish! Seriously, most of the designs were pretty crappy, so we were quite disappointed.

Anyway, the highlight of the week was a parcel from my reader, Gladys, from Canada. I’ve always wanted to try Montreal Steak Spice, but since it’s impossible to get here in Finland, Gladys kindly sent me a huge jar of it. After tasting the seasoning I totally fell in love with it! She also sent me super-fine almond flour and other goodies. Again, in Finland it’s practically impossible to find super-fine almond flour, so I really appreciate her efforts to get some delivered to me so that I can try it out.

Oh yes, I haven’t mentioned that I ordered a melanger for our company from India. With that machine, we can create and test chocolate and spread products. It took a bit over two months to receive the melanger — thanks to the lockdown. Anyway, I received it a couple of weeks ago.

It came with an Indian plug (fortunately with the correct voltage, though!).

Luckily, my husband is a certified electrician, so he changed the correct plug to the machine.

Here, I’m running our first chocolate experiments. Using the machine wasn’t that easy. I managed to get the stone rollers stuck a few times before I learned that you should add the ingredients little by little, only a couple of tablespoons at a time!

Currently, I’m celebrating the Midsummer in our summer cottage. The weather is warm but windy, as you can see from the lake.

I think I just have to post photos of cute animals in every blog post nowadays… this baby squirrel was standing in our yard. At first, I thought something is wrong with him, but after he jumped happily away, I knew he was just fine.