5 minute homemade hot honey is cheaper and better

You’ll love this homemade hot honey with completely customizable spice levels and a variety of different chiles for more flavor.

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I started seeing hot honey pop up at the store a while back and thought–why? For one, the price of these honeys was kind of up there, but also, how hot is hot? Not everyone is a chile-head and those of us somewhere in the middle spice tolerance level often like to prioritize flavor over raw heat.

So, like always, I took the idea of hot honey to the bat cave of my kitchen to see what I could come up with. My version of hot honey uses a lot of the same chiles I use in my standard Texas chili, so I knew that I’d like it. What I came up with is a balanced sweet hot mix that’s wonderful for drizzling on breads like pumpkin cornbread, hushpuppies, and incorporating into things like hot honey cornbread or just serving with charcuterie or cheese straws.

It tastes a bit like spicy BBQ sauce, which is always a welcome flavor. Shoot, you could ADD it to your favorite BBQ sauce to boost its flavor.

If you do have a chile-head in your life, this is an EASY gift to make.

Homemade Hot Honey

Why you should make hot honey yourself

1. Spice level: I learned living in Texas from ages 9-21 that everyone has a different level of spice heat that’s okay for them. When you buy a jar of pricey hot honey, you really have no idea how hot that is. You only know if you adjust it to your liking.
2. More variety of flavors: When you make your own hot honey, you can add in a bigger variety of chiles with a wider range of flavors. Most chile themed products I swear are marketed and made for people who only want the most EXTREME chile taste. The truth is that there are many many different chiles all with interesting tastes beyond just heat.
3. Cheaper!: Get some on sale honey and give it a spicy makeover for a few added pennies. I purposely made this a small batch so that you wouldn’t get stuck with a jar of something you’d forget about and waste.

What are the best chiles for making hot honey?

There are practically as many chiles as there are stars in the sky, but some are definitely better for making good hot honey than others. Here’s my favorite choices.

1. Guajillo: mild chile with fruity flavor. Guajillo is always delicious with BBQ.
2. Ancho: mild chile with smoky raisin like taste.
3. Piquin: hot tiny chiles with bright taste. I always add these in chile because you don’t need a lot to add a punch, but you can easily scale back the number you use for milder flavor.
4. New Mexico Chiles: We get a lot of these in Colorado, and they’re typically hot. I wish that they had more specific names like Mexican chiles do. Mostly they’re medium hot and bright tasting without being painfully hot.
5. Cayenne: I add cayenne powder and just a little because cayenne is HOT hot hot and can add a serious bite if you go overboard with it.
6. Cascabel: I can never find these but they’re one of my favorite chiles for their mild very fruity smoky flavor. They also have a beautiful color when you make them into a chile paste…but I digress.

Tips for making the best homemade hot honey

1. Use your favorite chiles only: the above list is MY personal favorite combination of chiles, but you might have a different one. Look at my recipe as a guideline.
2. Skip the chili powder, do this instead: Unless you’re making chili powder on your own, you don’t really know what’s in it, and chances are it’s lost most of it’s flavor. By grinding whole dried chiles in a spice grinder, you’ll get FRESH flavor from your chiles that’ll actually be good.
3. Do adjust your level of spice: I’m very cautious with cayenne because I do NOT like the burning heat it provides. Other people are different. I’ve put a range in the recipe so that you can get an idea of what will taste good, but you adjust it to you. To do this, add the smallest amount and then scale it up, tasting as you go.
4. Use your exhaust fan: I’ve had the chile coughs more times than I can count, and that is unpleasant to say the least. Once I smoked out my whole first floor of my house toasting chiles for green mole. Turn on your fan and do NOT put your head over the pan and inhale. Ditto goes for when you clean out your pan.

How to use hot honey

• Drizzle it: Drizzle it over cheese, breads like deli rye pan buns, homemade Hawaiian sweet rolls, cheeseburger pizzas, or fried chicken for some sweet heat flavor.
• Dip: Serve hushpuppies, cheese straws, or cornbread muffins with a side of hot honey.
• Use it as an ingredient: Use your hot honey in place of regular honey in hot honey beer bread or homemade pita bread.

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