Hot Honey Guide: What It Is and How to Use It
Hot honey is honey that has had chiles steeped in it. That is nearly the whole definition, and it explains why a jar of it ends up on so many different plates: on pizza, on fried chicken, over a wedge of cheese, stirred into a cocktail. The honey brings sweetness and gloss, the chile brings heat, and in most versions a splash of vinegar keeps the two from turning cloying. What separates one jar from another is which chile, which honey and how much acid.
What is in a jar of hot honey
The ingredient lists of four hot honeys show the range. Savannah Bee Company makes its hot honey with scotch bonnet and habanero peppers. Bushwick Kitchen in Brooklyn blends wildflower honeys from the United States and Argentina with habanero. XILLI, which makes Mexican sauces and seasonings, builds its two hot honeys on single-origin Mexican honey: the Veracruzan version uses honey from a Veracruz coffee estate, apple cider vinegar, a blend of three smoked chipotles (meco, mora and morita) and roasted coffee; the Oaxacan version uses Oaxacan honey, apple cider vinegar, honey vinegar and smoked Oaxacan chiles, pasilla oaxaqueño among them.
So hot honey is less a single product than a format. Habanero and scotch bonnet bring a fruity, sharp heat that arrives fast. Smoked chipotles bring smoke and a slower, rounder burn. The honey underneath matters too: a light wildflower honey stays in the background, while a darker single-origin honey adds its own flavor.
Why sweet calms the burn
The heat in chiles comes from capsaicin, and sugar changes how long that heat lingers. In a 1986 study in Perception & Psychophysics, David Stevens and Harry Lawless induced a strong mouth burn with capsaicin rinses and then had people rinse periodically with sweet, sour, salty or bitter solutions, plain water or nothing. The burn faded fastest with citric acid and with sucrose, and in the capsaicin trials more so with sucrose. Bitter quinine and doing nothing were slowest.
That finding explains the appeal of the jar in plain terms. Honey is mostly sugar, so it softens the edge of the chile it carries. The heat registers, then eases, which is why hot honey reads as warm and lively rather than punishing, and why it goes on foods that would never take a splash of hot sauce. Many hot honeys also include vinegar, and the study found acid helped clear the burn too.
Four hot honeys compared
| Hot honey | Chile | Honey and acid | Character | Try it first on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Savannah Bee Company | Scotch bonnet and habanero | Honey, squeeze bottle | Bright, fruity heat | Fried chicken, biscuits |
| Bushwick Kitchen Bees Knees | Habanero | U.S. and Argentine wildflower honey | Clean, honey-forward | Pizza, roasted vegetables |
| XILLI Veracruzan | Chipotle meco, mora and morita | Veracruz coffee estate honey, cider vinegar, roasted coffee | Smoky and fruity; XILLI rates it 5 of 10 for heat | Cheese, grilled pork |
| XILLI Oaxacan | Pasilla oaxaqueño, chipotle meco and morita | Oaxacan honey, cider and honey vinegars | Deep smoke, tangy | Tacos, squash, cocktails |
The four in the table: Savannah Bee Company (shop Savannah Bee hot honey), Bushwick Kitchen (shop Bushwick Kitchen Bees Knees spicy honey), XILLI Veracruzan (shop XILLI Veracruzan hot honey) and XILLI Oaxacan (shop XILLI Oaxacan hot honey). For a maple version of the same idea, Bushwick Kitchen also steeps habanero in Catskill maple syrup (shop Bushwick Kitchen Trees Knees spicy maple).
How to use hot honey
The rule that covers almost every use: add it at the end. Honey is sugar, and sugar scorches in a hot oven or pan long before the food under it is done. Drizzle after cooking, or brush it on in the last few minutes.
Pizza. The classic. Drizzle it over a pizza straight out of the oven, especially one with salami, sausage or a salty cheese. The fat and salt carry the sweetness and the chile cuts through both.
Fried chicken. Hot honey on hot, crisp chicken is a natural pairing, and timing matters so the crust stays crisp. The hot honey fried chicken recipe walks through why the honey goes on while the chicken is still hot.
Cheese. A spoonful beside an aged cheddar, a crumbly blue or a fresh goat cheese does what honey always does on a cheese plate, with a little warmth behind it. The smoky XILLI honeys stand up to stronger cheeses.
Roasted vegetables. Carrots, squash, sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts take a drizzle in the last five minutes of roasting, enough to glaze without burning.
Breakfast. On biscuits with butter, over fried eggs, on cornbread, on a bowl of yogurt for anyone who wants their morning to wake them up.
Cocktails. Honey is too thick to mix cold, so loosen it first: stir equal parts hot honey and warm water into a syrup and keep it in the fridge. Use it in place of honey syrup in a whiskey sour, a margarita or a non-alcoholic ginger fizz.
Dessert. A thin drizzle over vanilla ice cream or a slice of olive oil cake works the same way sea salt on caramel does: a small sharp note that makes the sweet taste sweeter.
How to make hot honey at home
Infusing honey at home is simple, and it has one real safety rule. Oregon State University Extension's 2026 guide, Infusing Honey Safely, explains that honey keeps because of its low water activity, meaning there is too little free water for microbes to grow, and that adding moisture can raise water activity high enough for them to grow. Fresh chiles carry water. Dried chiles do not.
The guide's habanero hot honey works like this: heat half a cup of apple cider vinegar until it steams but does not boil, add eight thinly sliced fresh habaneros and simmer for two minutes. Briefly simmering the peppers in vinegar helps release their flavor. Add no more than 5.63 ounces of the pepper and vinegar mixture to 2 pounds of honey, hold the honey at 140 F for 15 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve or several layers of cheesecloth and bottle it in clean containers.
For a smaller jar, halve it: 1 pound of honey (about 1 1/3 cups) takes up to 2.8 ounces of the pepper and vinegar mixture. That cap is the point of the recipe. The guide limits fresh, high-moisture ingredients such as fresh chiles and garlic to no more than 15 percent of the infusion by weight, and allows them in a hot infusion held at 140 F or above, never a cold one.
- Dried chiles are the simpler route. The guide treats properly dried ingredients, chiles that are brittle and crisp, as safe in either a cold or a hot infusion with no weight limit. Crumble a few dried chiles into honey, warm it, let it steep, taste and strain.
- Thermometer. Use one. 140 F is the floor for a fresh-chile infusion, and a boil scorches the honey.
- Storage. Properly infused honey sealed in food-grade containers with tight lids keeps indefinitely, according to the guide. Bubbling or a sour smell means it has fermented; throw it out.
- Infants. Honey of any kind can carry spores that cause infant botulism, and the guide is plain: infants under 1 year of age should never consume honey.
Altitude does not change this recipe. 140 F is far below the boiling point of water even in Denver, so the same thermometer reading works at any elevation.
Short answers
Is hot honey very spicy? Usually less than it sounds. The sugar softens the burn, and most hot honeys sit around the middle of the heat scale. XILLI rates its Veracruzan honey 5 out of 10.
Does hot honey need to be refrigerated? A commercial jar follows its own label. Honey infused at home by the extension method and sealed tight keeps at room temperature.
What is hot honey good on? Pizza, fried chicken, biscuits, cheese, roasted vegetables and vanilla ice cream, and as a syrup in cocktails.
For everything else honey does, from crystals to floral sources, the complete guide to honey goes further, and the honey collection has the plain jars to infuse your own. Hot honey works because it is a balancing act already done: heat, sweetness and acid in one spoon, ready to finish whatever is on the plate.
