Honey Hattie Ellis Honey is the epitome of a summer food, redolent of flowers and golden, sun-filled days. Add some sweetness to your life - and your cooking - with this delectable food.

In this article

Specialist honeys Choosing honey

Styles of honey Honey and health

Cooking with honey Recipes

Honey is one of the most extraordinary and ancient foods on the planet. Humans have sought out this delectable source of sweetness since Stone Age hunters raided wild honeybee nests. It is a completely natural product made by bees gathering and concentrating down the nectar of many thousands of plants. To gather enough to make just one 500g pot, the bees may travel a distance equivalent to flying around the world three times.

Not long ago there were just a few kinds of honey available in Britain, but now shop shelves offer a huge range from all over the world, from Greek pine to Australian eucalyptus to Scottish heather honey. These specialist pots are much more expensive than standard ones. What are these honeys and how are they made?

An ordinary honey is a commodity product, perhaps a mixture of what is cheapest from several countries. A specialist honey comes from bees that have been set to work harvesting nectar in a specific place.

Specialist honey literally has a taste of a place, whether it is from the mixed flora of an area, such as Greek mountainside honey, or predominantly a single plant, such as rosemary honey or acacia honey. Honeys vary according to the nectars they are made from. Because bees gather the honey from only within a few miles of their hives, beekeepers are able to influence where and upon what the bees feed and the final style and flavour of the honey. To do this, beekeepers will put their hives in specific places, such as heather moorland in Scotland, Northumbria and Dartmoor.

The range of honey available is enormous. There are different colours, from the more intensely flavoured dark ones, such as chestnut, to the lighter-coloured and flavoured ones, such as acacia. One speciality to look out for is honeydew honey, which comes, not from nectar at all, but from the bees gathering a sticky substance exuded from aphids feeding on tree sap. This Marmite of honeys, strong to the point of being almost savoury, is strangely addictive.

Honey hint

As well as enjoying local British honeys, explore those from France, Italy and Spain and, further afield, the butterscotchy New Zealand honeys.

Standard honey is heat-processed and finely filtered, which makes it stay liquid. Otherwise, it can be purposely crystallised and sold as ‘set honey’, the kind that you spread with a knife.

Specialist honeys are simply warmed and gently filtered so that more of the taste and nutritional goodness stays in the pot. Honeycomb is the most natural of all, being just what the bees make in the hive to store honey for themselves.

Untreated honeys crystallise at different rates. Some, such as acacia honey, stay liquid while others begin to harden much more quickly. Crystallisation does not affect the quality but if you want to make crystallised honey liquid again, just put the jar for a while in a warm place, such as an airing cupboard, before using.

For at least 4,000 years we have been using honey for our health.

For at least 4,000 years we have been using honey for our health. Trace elements in honey, such as its many minerals, make it nutritionally superior to sugar. Furthermore, the properties of particular plants come through in single-varietal honeys. Manuka honey from New Zealand, from a plant long used by the Maori for healing, is now marketed specifically for its health-giving properties and is used internally for problems such as stomach complaints and externally on burns. In 2004, a manuka dressing for wounds was licensed for use in NHS hospitals.

Many honey fans replace the sugar in their diet with honey. Cooking with honey differs from cooking with sugar, though, so recipes will generally have to be adjusted accordingly. For example, honey is hygroscopic, which means it absorbs moisture. Replacing sugar with honey in your baking will therefore result in cakes that remain moist for longer. As honey tastes ‘sweeter’ than sugar does, the general advice is to use one quantity of honey to replace one-and-one-quarter quantities of sugar.

Honey is delicious in marinades for meats such as pork chops, chicken or duck, but you need to be careful once it goes in the oven because honey burns relatively quickly. One tip is to wipe off the marinade and pour it onto the food half-way through cooking to get a beautifully lacquered finish.

Heat destroys some of the quality of good honeys, so it is better to use specialist honeys in uncooked foods in which you can taste the difference. Using honey is a wonderful way to sweeten fruit salads or smoothies. You can use honey as a flavouring in ice cream, but be aware that it freezes at a lower temperature than ordinary sugar. This will affect the texture slightly but by using a combination of honey and sugar you can overcome this problem.

Honey has an affinity with milk products. As well as putting it on your breakfast yoghurt, do as the Italians do and drizzle honey over thin slices of cheese as a deliciously sweet-and-salty end to a meal. Chestnut honey or orange blossom honey with pecorino or Roquefort are two excellent combinations.

Experiment with several kinds of honey and taste the extraordinary range of colours, aromas and flavours. Then try your hand with these sweet and savoury recipes:

Cakes and bakes

• Honey drop scones
• Honey flapjacks
• Honey and hazelnut cake
• Honey cake

Marinades and glazes

• Mustard and honey marinade
• Spicy lime and honey marinade
• Marinated salmon with chilli, lime and honey
• Honey-glazed gammon with potato and carrot mash

Smoothies and ice creams

• Honey, almond and raspberry yoghurt ice cream