Cooking with honey
Honey in food
Honey is a popular ingredient in cakes, biscuits and puddings but it is also effectively used in savoury dishes – gammon steaks with honey glaze, lamb with honey and ginger or even, as the Romans did, combine it with oil and garam to baste pork coated with almonds, coriander, fennel and pepper. However, do select a honey to suit the recipe – very strong tasting honeys do not necessarily produce the best results! A more delicate flavour provides the sweetness without dominating the food.
To substitute honey for sugar in a recipe some adjustments have to be made as it absorbs more moisture and you need less of it for overall sweetness in cakes. Be aware that if you are using honey in a cooked dish that it can burn before the meat is cooked – try adding the glaze or marinade later in the cooking.
Probably the best web site for honey recipes is that of Sussex beekeeper Roger Patterson. It has over 100 honey recipes, helpfully grouped by type such as main courses, desserts, cakes, drinks and pickles. The web sites of Northamptonshire Beekeepers’ Association also has some recipes for cakes and sweets.
Mead
Honey is also the basis of mead and related drinks such as metheglin and melomel.
If you are a home winemaker and have access to a reasonable quantity of honey, you’ll find some simple recipes for dry and sweet mead here.
If you are an expert and want to explore the wide range of alcoholic drinks that have been made with honey, you’ll find some fairly comprehensive information here.