Mustard is Superior to Ketchup

Have you ever made a meal and felt like it’s missing something? Have you cooked crispy, golden fries or a mouthwatering veggie burger and lacked enjoyment? Have you craved extra flavour or anything exciting to go with your meal? Mustard will fulfill all those cravings and more!

Imagine sitting at your dining table, alone in your dimly lit kitchen. It’s 11pm and you’re famished. You’re stomach is churning, aching and making unfamiliar noises you’d never wish to hear. You sit down, tuck in your chair and chomp down on a soggy, microwaved fry you cooked last Wednesday night. It’s revolting, boring and all out tasteless. You know it needs something else. 11pm wouldn’t be the same without that extra spark. You walk to your fridge and open the squeaky door, hear the refrigerator rumble and the click of the fridge light. You reach in and pull out a bottle of the only acceptable condiment. Sour, flavourful, bright, yellow mustard. You shake it, pound it and smack it to get the last few drops out onto your chipped, ceramic plate. Suddenly you’re awake, you’re happy and your soggy, Wednesday night fries are everything you’d ever dreamed of and more. The flavour is immaculate, tasteful and rich. You feel like you could win the world. You could solve homelessness, world hunger, sexism and just with the power of mustard. You’re suddenly unstoppable. The spice on your tongue gives you a zing and bounce in your step you never knew existed before.

Now, reimagine that same scenario with ketchup. Your soggy fries have disappointed you. You snatch the red, crusty ketchup bottle from the back of the old fridge. The lid of the ketchup container is cracked and stained. The red substance pours out onto your plate and drips onto the edge of a fry. You pick the fry up, hoping, dreaming, begging for it to be better than it was before. But when it hits your tongue it’s worse than before. The old, salty fry suddenly has a sweet taste that shouldn’t be there. The ketchup slides down your throat and you can feel the slimy, grossness of it. It doesn’t cheer you up. It makes 11pm tiresome and depressing. Now your dark kitchen smells of ketchup, the rotten, bland smell of old Halloween candy that’s been left out for weeks on your counter that you forgot to chuck. Ketchup doesn’t make you feel like a superhero. It doesn’t put a spring in your step like mustard does, with its spice and poignant taste. Ketchup just sits there, sad and warm.

Mustard has never let me down. You can add it to anything. It will make everything exciting. Add it to your burger, on top of your onions or dip your carrots in it. Mustard brings out the colours of everything. Ketchup just slouches in the back quietly. Mustard is like the kid in your class that asks the teacher an immense amount of questions to keep the class from having to work on quadratics or finding the radius of the sun. Everyone loves that kid. But ketchup is the kid who always knows the answers. She reminds the teacher that the class had homework due and doesn’t let you switch spots with your friends when there's a substitute. Ketchups not the fun, rebellious one, mustard is and always has been. Mustard is the kind of guy that would take you hiking over bridges and rocks to find a secret waterfall hidden under the trees. Ketchup is the guy that would bring you to the movies but make you pay for your own snacks and leave you there once your movie is done. He definitely wouldn’t let you pick a movie either. What ketchup wants, goes. With mustard, you never know what could happen. One day you could be ziplining while the next you could be water skiing.

Everyone I know who prefers ketchup to mustard definitely owns a chihuahua. Those nasty little dogs who bark at you when you walk past them or snag at your pants. Mustard people are definitely husky owners. Mustard people have fun. Ketchup people are snobs. It’s the only way to go about it. I’ve never once seen a ketchup lover shopping for ketchup. I always see my fellow mustard people out and about. There are so many mustards to pick from. Spicy mustard, Dijon mustard, honey mustard or good old fashioned yellow mustard. Ketchup shoppers are in and out. They don’t linger or look around. They grab the same ketchup every time and are out of there in a heartbeat. Us mustard shoppers explore. We search for new foods and new recipes. Ketchup people are unnatural. I’ve seen ketchup people put their ketchup on rice and if that’s not saying something to you about how mustard is just so much better then I don’t know what else can. Who eats rice with ketchup? Ketchup is basic. Rice is supposed to be exotic, covered with spices, vegetables, tofu and beans. Us mustard lovers would never think to put our mustard on rice. Mustard deserves to be showcased. Mixing it in with rice would drown it’s loud and exciting ways away.

There’s really no other way to say it. Mustard is superior to ketchup. Ketchup will never win. It’s not bright enough, spunky enough and most definitely isn’t flavourful enough. Ketchup is just not enough. So next time you’re sitting in your dimly lit kitchen at 11pm and you're in search of your next meal, microwave those fries you made last Wednesday night, open your fridge, pull that vivid bottle of mustard out, splash it all over your plate and change the world!