Hot Honey

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We’re in our second year as beekeepers on our growing homestead and because chicken math has nothing on bee math, I doubled my hives this spring.

Which you would think would double my honey output, right? Wrong. It went up exponentially – for 50lbs in our first year to over 150lbs this year.

You know what that means? We’re about to make your new favorite hot sauce!

This homemade hot honey recipe is dedicated to bee math.

Hot honey dripping off a spoon.
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Tips


  • If you’ve got a jar of honey in the pantry that has crystallized, this is the perfect recipe to use it in! The heat during the infusion stage melts the sugar crystals and returns the honey to its liquid form.
  • Fresh chili peppers can be used to infuse your honey, but I hate to add water to the mix, so I do not use that method. Honey has a long shelf life because the bees dry it to around 17% moisture content. Higher than 18% can actually cause fermentation of your hot honey.
  • I do have a guide on drying peppers, and it works for any hot pepper.

Key Ingredients

Honey: I’m using hyper local honey, as in straight from my backyard, but I do recommend using local ingredients wherever possible, especially honey because it is believed that local honey actually has health benefits!

Dried Peppers: For this batch of hot honey, I’m using dehydrated Red Flame peppers from my garden, but you can use pretty much any dried peppers or even crushed red pepper flakes! Red Flame peppers are a cayenne variety, with a Scoville rating between 30 and 50,000 SHU. This puts them on par with other cayenne peppers, Chili De Arbol, and some Thai peppers. If you like more kick, try habanero peppers. For less heat, opt for jalapeno or poblano.

Ingredients required for hot honey.

How To Make Hot Honey

  1. Add 2 cups of honey and coarsely chopped dry peppers with their seeds or 3-4 tablespoons of dried chili flakes to a small heavy bottomed saucepan.
  2. Heat the mixture on low until barely simmering. It’s important to NOT boil the honey – boiling honey expands rapidly and can make a mess, and at a certain point, boiled honey begins to make candy – which is not what we want all!
  3. Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring regularly, then sample the honey:
    Spicy enough: move to the next step
    Not spicy enough: add a bit more peppers or pepper flakes and simmer for another 5 minutes before testing again
    Too spicy: add a bit more honey to tone down the spice before moving to the next step
  4. Remove honey from heat and allow to cool slightly. Meanwhile, sanitize a storage jar by washing in hot soapy water, rinsing well and drying completely.
  5. Using a fine mesh strainer, carefully strain the solids out of the warm honey. Honey flows more easily when warm, so don’t allow it to cool too much before straining.

If desired, you can leave the dried peppers or pepper flakes in the honey without straining. It does make a beautiful gift with the peppers intact, but the heat will likely continue to intensify in the honey during the storage period.

Batch + Storage

Batch

2 cups of honey will produce a scant 2 cups of hot honey – you may lose a bit of volume to evaporation and residuals left in the sauce pan, but you’ll get pretty close to what you put into it. You can easily scale this recipe up or down, but stick to the 1 cup of honey to 3-4 dried peppers or 1 cup of honey to 2 tablespoons of red pepper flakes ratio.

Storage

The beauty of using dry peppers in this recipe means you can store your infused honey like any other honey, at room temperature away from sunlight and temperature swings. Mine stays in my pantry.

If it crystallizes over time, and raw honey has a tendency to do that, especially honey high in canola nectar, it can be kept in the glass jar and placed into a pot of barely simmering water and heated until it returns to it’s liquid state. If you’re not storing in a glass jar, I recommend scraping the honey into a small saucepan and heating it directly that way.

Hot honey with dried peppers and pepper flakes.

SERVING SUGGESTIONS

You’re going to love the sweet heat from this hot honey so much, you’re going to want to drizzle it on everything. Here’s some ideas that you may not have had:

Mason jars: I am a self proclaimed jar lady, and every time Bernardin or Ball comes out with a limited edition jar I am forced to buy it. I have a great eclectic collection of mason jars and I use them for all sorts of recipes, from canning, to storing dehydrated goods, to making creme brulee. Mason jars are excellent from a food storage perspective because they can easily be sterilized, the lids are easily replaceable and inexpensive.

More Elevated Ingredients

Find more recipes to elevate simple ingredients!

๐Ÿ“– Printable Recipe

Hot honey in a mason jar.

Hot Honey

Allyson Letal
Create delicious homemade hot honey with just two simple ingredients: raw honey and dried chili peppers (or red pepper flakes). This quick and easy recipe combines the natural sweetness of honey with a spicy kick, making it a condiment you'll reach for over and over.
5 from 1 vote
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Course Elevated Ingredients
Cuisine American
Servings 32 tablespoons

Ingredients
 

  • 2 cups raw honey
  • 8-10 dried peppers, chopped or 3-4 tablespoons red pepper flakes

Instructions
 

  • Add 2 cups of honey and 8-10 chopped dried peppers and their seeds or 3-4 tablespoons of red pepper flakes to a small saucepan.
  • Heat the mixture on low until barely simmering. Do not allow the honey to boil.
  • Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring regularly, then sample the honey:
    Spicy enough:ย move to the next step
    Not spicy enough:ย you can add a bit more peppers or pepper flakes and simmer for another 5 minutes before testing again.
    Too spicy:ย add a bit more honey to tone down the spice before moving to the next step.
  • Remove honey from heat and allow to cool slightly. Meanwhile, sanitize a storage jar by washing in hot soapy water, rinsing well and drying completely.
  • Using a fine mesh strainer, carefully strain the solids out of the warm honey. Cool, then cover before storing.

Notes

Batch

2 cups of honey will produce a scant 2 cups of hot honey โ€“ you may lose a bit of volume to evaporation and residuals left in the sauce pan, but youโ€™ll get pretty close to what you put into it. You can easily scale this recipe up or down, but stick to the 1 cup of honey to 4-5 dried peppers or 1 cup of honey to 2 tablespoons of red pepper flakes ratio.

Storage

The beauty of using dry peppers in this recipe means you can store your infused honey like any other honey, at room temperature away from sunlight and temperature swings.ย 
If it crystallizes over time your hot honey can be kept in the glass jar and placed into a pot of barely simmering water and heated until it returns to itโ€™s liquid state. If youโ€™re not storing in a glass jar, I recommend scraping the honey into a small saucepan and heating it directly that way.

Recommended Equipment + Ingredients

Nutrition

Serving: 1tablespoon
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

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2 Comments

  1. 5 stars
    Love honey, just bought another Five pounds. And love hot, hot peppers. Our honey is from Vanderhoof British Columbia Mountains. Fireweed.
    I will be sure to try your recipe. Will be good on ice cream
    Wayne
    Nakusp, B.C.

    1. Hi Wayne, fireweed honey sounds amazing! Did you know fireweed pollen is actually grey? We have some fireweed around her and the first time I saw fireweed pollen I was worried my hives were molding!