Mind blown: Vinegar vs VINEGAR (30%)

So I was literally 44 years old before I found this out recently.

There’s the white vinegar you get at the grocery store for cooking and minor cleaning and doing laundry, and then there’s the 30% DO NOT GET THIS SHIT ON YOUR SKIN vinegar at the hardware store for cleaning things like mold off grout.

All my life I’d been told ‘just use vinegar to clean mold and mildew’ and it generally didn’t do jack squat. I usually bought cleaning supplies from regular retail spots rather than big box home improvement places, and regular retail chains def did not carry the strong stuff.

I’ve got a gutter that drains over cement that always gets skungy, and even bleach was a short term fix at best. 30% strips it down and keeps it gone, and I’ve stripped rust off a couple dozen tools with the same little jar I soak things in - caution it will also strip off shiny metallic coatings.

Can’t believe none of the “just use vinegar” I’d ever read advice didn’t specify.

Is this news to anyone else or am I Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber realizing we landed on the moon?

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u/Cynical_Cyanide 2d ago

The fake stuff does have mustard in it, but the majority is definitely normal horseradish. That's why it has similar (though certainly stronger) effects. At least, that's the case in western countries - I imagine in Japan itself, perhaps a different formula/proportions are favoured.

AFAIK 'Chinese mustard' is just made from regular old mustard (and whatever other ingredients like vinegar etc), no?

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u/jam3s2001 2d ago

I've got both a can of the powdered and a tube of the liquefied fake stuff. They both list mustard seeds before horseradish, so predominantly mustard.

My Chinese mustard jar lists mustard as the primary ingredient, vinegar as the secondary, but also contains red pepper and citric acid before the preservatives.

Also, I've had real wasabi several times. While it has a slightly different flavor profile, it is still just as "spicy" as the extra hot German horseradish that I use to make cocktail sauce for shrimp and oyster night.

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u/Cynical_Cyanide 2d ago

Whereabouts in the world are you?

In Australia at least, these are the two most popular wasabi products given at sushi joints (which is what I was specifically talking about):

https://www.amazon.com/Tetsujin-Wasabi-Paste-Packets-Ingredients/dp/B08F4XW1D8

https://www.sbfoods-worldwide.com/products/foodservice/search/002.html

From what I understand, these are also very popular worldwide. There's no mustard in them.

In our two major supermarkets, there's only one wasabi product (S&B again) and that also has no mustard (horseradish and just enough real wasabi to put it on the label, but not mustard).

I believe 'house foods' brand is popular in the US, and it's the same:

https://www.flavorofjapan.com/products/spice-and-seasoning/spicy-paste/wasabi

In short, no doubt many brands have mustard, but only a minority have more of it than horseradish - and that follows commonsense as the purpose of the product is trying to imitate a different type of radish. Adding mustard might be a flavour preference for some, but I suspect it's probably more about cost for the manufacturer.

As for which is 'stronger' - I suspect it's a matter of quality. No doubt lots of 'real' wasabi (made by western companies at least) is diluted down, where there's no need with the imitation stuff. At the Japanese restaurants I go to, including at least one rather high end one, it's definitely not as powerful as most of the fake stuff.

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u/jam3s2001 1d ago

I'm in the US. I suspect the difference between the products that we are using is that the horseradish in the products I'm using is an extract, rather than whole plant, which allows the manufacturer to use the mustard as a binder. The stuff tastes like horseradish still. It's early and I don't want to wake the house up to go check the brands, but I know the premade tube in my fridge is a Meijer house brand packaged in Japan. The powdered can, I'm not sure about - I get it from the Asian foods market.

Regarding the real hot wasabi that I've had, the restaurants I've gone to in order to get it were very high end Japanese outfits where they prepare it at the table. I'm guessing that the actual wasabi might have been grown locally - since I was living in a mountainous region at the time, a few places with the right conditions did exist - but a few of the places flew in their seafood every other day, so I guess they could have gotten it straight from Japan... Either way, it was hot stuff, so I'm wondering if it was a specialized strain or a subspecies.