Honey Cooking Tips

There are countless recipes for Honey on the Internet so instead, here are some helpful tips for cooking with Honey.

Practical Functions of Cooking with Honey

Cooking with honey gives you a never-ending list of possibilities and recipes due to the many practical functions honey could serve. Seven are listed here:

1) Enhances browning and crisp -- great for glazing roasted and baked foods to promote surface browning. 2) A flavor enhancer -- an always welcomed natural sweetener for hot teas and cold beverages, especially when there is a huge variety of flavors of honey. 3) Provides texture and feel -- an excellent addition in pastries and cakes making. 4) Prolongs shelf-life -- a natural preservative for pickles and sauces. 5) Retains moisture -- an essential ingredient for providing the moisture in rich cakes and prolonging the moisture retention. 6) Is binding due to its viscosity -- a brilliant ingredient that aids shaping of desserts such as pastries, puddings, and cakes. 7) Adds color -- contributes a delightful golden hue to sauces, dressings, jellies, and frozen desserts.

6 Useful tips for cooking with honey

1. As a general guide, when using honey recipes, use less of honey because it is almost twice as sweet as sugar. (Nevertheless, some honey varieties are sweeter than others, e.g. Tupelo honey.)

Replace one cup of sugar with half a cup of honey, and because honey is hygroscopic (meaning it attracts water), reduce the amount of liquid in the recipe by 1/4 cup for each cup of honey added.

2. Give longer time for beating and more vigorous beating compared to sugar recipes, and when baking with honey.

3. Add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda for each cup of honey used. This will neutralize honey's acidity and help the food rise.

4. Reduce the oven temperature by 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Honey batter becomes crisp and browns faster than sugar batter.

5. When using honey in jams, jellies, or candies, increase the cooking temperature just a bit to allow the extra liquid to evaporate.

6. The floral variety of the honey should be considered when cooking with honey since honey has the power to balance, enhance or impart some of its flavor to other foods. The fascinating number of honey varieties and their versatility in cooking is the reason to the thousands of tantalizing recipes using honey.

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