8 Honey Cooking Tips

Cooking with honey takes some know-how. But honey offers some real advantages in cooked products. It adds color, mouth-feel, and moisture. Honey increases shelf-life, and honey is a natural sweetener with twice the sweetening power of granulated sugar. It's well-worth discovering how to cook with honey. Here are 8 honey cooking tips to help you learn how to incorporate honey into your cooking.

Honey Cooking Tip #1: How to Store Honey

First you need to buy the honey. When you bring the honey home from the store, store your honey in a dry, dark place. Honey should also be stored out of direct sunlight and close to room temperature. Avoid storing honey in the refrigerator, because honey absorbs and retains moisture. It will also crystallize in the refrigerator.

Honey Cooking Tip #2: How to Liquefy Crystallized Honey

Honey sometimes turns granulated, but it's not spoiled if it does. You can use it granulated or you can turn it back to liquid. All you need to do is place the honey container in a pan of warm water. When granulated honey turns back into a clear liquid, it's no longer crystallized. One word of warning: although some people heat honey in the microwave, the little honey bears can melt. If you plan to heat honey that way, do it in 15 second intervals.

Honey Cooking Tip #3: How to Measure Honey

You really don't need to work at getting the honey out of a measuring cup, if you do this first. Either rinse the measuring cup with really hot water or spray the cup with cooking spray. Then your measured honey will easily slide right out of the cup.

Honey Cooking Tip #4: Use Honey to Increase Shelf-Life

Did you know that adding a few tablespoonfuls of honey to a baking mix will result in a moist and flavorful product? Moisture in baked goods help keep them fresh longer. Honey also adds shelf-life to your cooked products. You might want to consider using honey in baked goods that you plan to mail. The person who opens your package will appreciate the freshness of your gift.

Honey Cooking Tip #5: Reduce Other Liquids

Honey adds extra liquid to your baked goods. So if you are substituting honey for granulated sugar, you must reduce liquids elsewhere. If you don't, you might ruin your product. You will need to reduce ¼ cup of liquid for each cup of honey substituted in your recipe. And because honey has twice the sweetening strength as table sugar, you will only need to use half as much honey as sugar.

Honey Cooking Tip #6: Use Honey for Thickener or Binder

In salad dressings, honey works like an emulsifier. It provides texture and mouth-feel. It add a thicker viscosity to the dressing, while working as a binder. And because honey is very sweet, due to its high fructose content, you won't need much honey for sweetening your dips and dressings.

Honey Cooking Tip #7: Lower the Honey's Acidity

Honey has an acidity that you must take into account. For every cup of honey you substitute in your recipe, use ½ teaspoon baking soda to neutralize the honey's acidity. This is important to remember, because the baking soda helps your food rise.

Honey Cooking Tip #8: Reduce Oven Temperature

When cooking with honey, you need to remember to lower your oven temperature by 25 degrees. Honey browns easily and makes baked products turn brown more quickly. You won't want to burn your baked product by baking it at too high a temperature. But not all browning in bad thing. If you use honey in glazes, it easily helps brown the surface of your product.

If you've been wanting to cook or bake with honey, but you've not known how, now you know 8 tips for cooking with honey. You know how to store your honey properly, how to use honey for added thickening and added shelf-life, how to make honey substitutions, and how to pay attention to cooking temperatures. Why not do some baking today?