Hot Honey

Today I stopped to run some errands at the mall before heading over to walk the reservoir. Of course, once my official errands were complete, I couldn’t resist ducking into Williams Sonoma to look at the specialty bakeware to see if there was anything interesting to add to my collection. On a lark, I also looked at the specialty foods and discovered that they had Mike’s Hot Honey, which seemed to have received liberal mention in Butter & Scotch, the dessert and cocktail cookbook that I had I reviewed earlier in the week. At the time, I couldn’t remember specifically what the hot honey was used for but, since it was on sale, I bought it thinking that I would look up the recipes when I got home.

The Index Search

When I checked the book’s index, “honey” was listed as an index term but “hot honey” was not. Under “honey,” there were the following entries: Hibiscus-Honey Simple Syrup, Honeychile Rider, Hot Honey Simple Syrup, Local, and Peanut Butter Banana Honey Cupcakes.

I first flipped to the page for Hot Honey Simple Syrup, hoping for some more details of what to do with my hot honey. In the headnote, it said that the hot honey simple syrup is the essential ingredient in the Honeychile Rider cocktail. It also said that Mike’s Hot Honey (the brand that I bought) was “one of our favorite ingredients ever, delicious on everything from pizza to ice cream!” Well, my mood wasn’t adventurous enough to try hot honey on pizza, but I figured making a cocktail wouldn’t kill me (especially since I had done a lap of the reservoir earlier).

The Recipes

The recipe for hot honey syrup calls for one cup of hot honey, which is the majority of my 12-ounce bottle. On closer inspection, the recipe is basically one part hot honey and one part water heated until the honey dissolves. So I figured I could deconstruct the hot honey syrup requirement of the Honeychile Rider into more manageable portions of hot honey and water so I wouldn’t get stuck with two cups of hot honey syrup and nothing to use it in.

The Honeychile Rider was fairly complex: it required Dorothy Parker gin, passion fruit puree, hot honey simple syrup, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup, and Bittermans Elemakule Tiki Bitters. I figured my bottle of Tanqueray gin would do just fine. But I didn’t have the passion fruit puree or the right bitters. I didn’t even have passion fruit nectar because I cleared all the old cans of Goya out of my cabinet after they expired. I did have both Angostura bitters and Bittermans Burlesque Bitters, and I’m not such a connoisseur of bitters that one of those couldn’t be an acceptable substitute. So I added passion fruit puree to my grocery list and postponed the cocktail adventure.

Searching the document for “hot honey” identified hot honey syrup as a key ingredient in the Teaches of Peaches Jell-ohh Shots. I was considering making gelatin shots for an upcoming ladies brunch, so this recipe was an intriguing possibility. But yet again, the ingredients were outside the realm of what was in the household: Owney’s rum (no), peach puree (no), peach liqueur (maybe?), fresh orange juice (no), coconut cream (no), fresh lime juice (bottled - yes!), hot honey simple syrup (yes!), gelatin (yes!), and peaches (no). So that adventure was off the books for tonight.

My Solution

So I looked to the bottle label for inspiration. I could wait until tomorrow to mix a tablespoon of the hot honey into my morning yogurt. But what fun would that be? Seeing as I just bought a carton of vanilla ice cream – the book had a boozy milkshake recipe that I wanted to try – I figured I would try the hot honey on one scoop of vanilla ice cream. But before I slathered my precious ice cream in the stuff, I wanted to know what I was getting into. So I tried a little from the foil seal on the container. It was honey, with a definite chile kick to it. It was a little oppressive on its own, but a scant tablespoon (yes, I measured it!) on the vanilla ice cream (no, I did not measure that!) was really nice.

I am definitely going to amend my shopping lists so that I can try at least one of the other two recipes using hot honey syrup. So stay tuned for Hot Honey Part Two!