Honey Goes Good On Everything

[LMNO]

That depends on the last time I took a shower.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Question to myself: Do I really want to be eating stuff that's used to kill bedbugs?

It's not poisonous, it's essentially just silica. It's used in a lot of food processing. Also it's filtered out of the honey completely in the process.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Note to self: Purchase all future honey in Austin. 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Note to self: Purchase all future honey in Austin. 

Yeah, given our healthy lifestyles, I'd hate to get fake honey.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yeah, worst case scenario here, we're just talking about it being a rip-off.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Yeah, worst case scenario here, we're just talking about it being a rip-off.

I'm reasonably certain Kroger brand honey never saw the inside of a beehive at all, ever.

But it tastes like honey.

Interestingly enough, we use a process to scrub chemicals that is in principle identical to the process used to "purify" honey.  Add a chemical that the undesireable stuff sticks to, that is itself easily filtered out.  Then filter it out.  Wrong stuff goes with it.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Question to myself: Do I really want to be eating stuff that's used to kill bedbugs?

It's not poisonous, it's essentially just silica. It's used in a lot of food processing. Also it's filtered out of the honey completely in the process.

Yeah, my understanding is that it's only dangerous if you inhale it as dust. Even then, it would take extensive exposure to be noticeably harmful.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Note to self: Purchase all future honey in Austin. 

Yeah, given our healthy lifestyles, I'd hate to get fake honey.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Depends on how long and how hot, and I don't actually know the exact time to temperature ratio at which it starts breaking down. For a quick glaze, you're probably just fine. I do that with mine and it still tastes like honey.

There's a lot of bizarre debate on this topic. Cooking honey for a long period of time will break down some of its flavors, but it still works fine as a sweetener etc. It just doesn't taste as much like honey as it does before you cook it. For example, to make mead, you boil the honey for a long period of time and the end result still tastes like honey. Honey in sauces (we use it a lot to sweeten tomato sauces) is a great sweetener, but it doesn't taste so much like fresh honey.

I had a conversation about this with a chef that owns several high end restaurants in Columbus. He said that it will always depend on what taste you're going for. Since honey is not a complex sugar (its already broken down, as opposed to refined sugar), it can be really good in some applications, even if a lot of the flavor is cooked away (better than refined sugar or corn syrup). Getting the same sweetness with less calories or getting good sweetness that is less problematic for diabetics were both applications he mentioned.

Honey is also useful for caramelizing/browning if you know what you're doing because it browns at a lower temperature.

There is also a belief making traction on the net that putting honey in hot stuff (lie tea) is unhealthy because it somehow becomes toxic. That's a load of bullshit  spawned by a religious group which believes honey is some kind of spiritual medicine.

I cook with honey a lot, not specifically for the taste, but because I find its just a really good sweetener.

And ALWAYS get your honey from a reputable source. There was a company hawking honey on television here in Turkey (4 kilo for 99 lira!!) once their honey was checked though, it was found to be mostly syrup, they got banned from TV and had to pay a huge fine. However, knowing local beekeepers has kept us in delicious honey that ends up even cheaper than the crap they were trying to push.

[Pergamos]

Depends on how long and how hot, and I don't actually know the exact time to temperature ratio at which it starts breaking down. For a quick glaze, you're probably just fine. I do that with mine and it still tastes like honey.

There's a lot of bizarre debate on this topic. Cooking honey for a long period of time will break down some of its flavors, but it still works fine as a sweetener etc. It just doesn't taste as much like honey as it does before you cook it. For example, to make mead, you boil the honey for a long period of time and the end result still tastes like honey. Honey in sauces (we use it a lot to sweeten tomato sauces) is a great sweetener, but it doesn't taste so much like fresh honey.

I had a conversation about this with a chef that owns several high end restaurants in Columbus. He said that it will always depend on what taste you're going for. Since honey is not a complex sugar (its already broken down, as opposed to refined sugar), it can be really good in some applications, even if a lot of the flavor is cooked away (better than refined sugar or corn syrup). Getting the same sweetness with less calories or getting good sweetness that is less problematic for diabetics were both applications he mentioned.

Honey is also useful for caramelizing/browning if you know what you're doing because it browns at a lower temperature.

There is also a belief making traction on the net that putting honey in hot stuff (lie tea) is unhealthy because it somehow becomes toxic. That's a load of bullshit  spawned by a religious group which believes honey is some kind of spiritual medicine.

I cook with honey a lot, not specifically for the taste, but because I find its just a really good sweetener.

And ALWAYS get your honey from a reputable source. There was a company hawking honey on television here in Turkey (4 kilo for 99 lira!!) once their honey was checked though, it was found to be mostly syrup, they got banned from TV and had to pay a huge fine. However, knowing local beekeepers has kept us in delicious honey that ends up even cheaper than the crap they were trying to push.

Most mead recipes say not to boil the honey.  Just heat it up enough for it to dissolve completely in the water.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yeah, you're not supposed to boil the honey in mead because doing anything that robs it of flavor really defeats the purpose of using honey in the first place, as it's so much more expensive than sugar or corn syrup.

[Cain]

That said, only LARPers drink mead anyway.  You could put rat poison in it, for all they'd notice.

And you'd be doing the world a favour if you did.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

we made mead mutiple times with the loal SCA brewing group. Based on their multiple decades of experience, boiling (according to the guys running the show) provides a stronger taste, but it does weaken the aroma a little. Considering that there was few hundred gallons of experience and I was at 0, we did it their way.

The finished products were awesome. The sweet mead stil had a honey scent and excellent taste the methaglen (spiced mead) tasted almost like ginger beer, but sweeter.

Boiling does cause some changes, but in my experience it doesn't ruin the honey. I just did a quick Google search and found another group that did a double blind of boil vs no-boil mead:

http://www.washingtonwinemaker.com/blog/2008/10/28/making-mead-testing-the-controversy-over-boiling/

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

we made mead mutiple times with the loal SCA brewing group. Based on their multiple decades of experience, boiling (according to the guys running the show) provides a stronger taste, but it does weaken the aroma a little. Considering that there was few hundred gallons of experience and I was at 0, we did it their way.

The finished products were awesome. The sweet mead stil had a honey scent and excellent taste the methaglen (spiced mead) tasted almost like ginger beer, but sweeter.

Boiling does cause some changes, but in my experience it doesn't ruin the honey. I just did a quick Google search and found another group that did a double blind of boil vs no-boil mead:

http://www.washingtonwinemaker.com/blog/2008/10/28/making-mead-testing-the-controversy-over-boiling/

Well, if a bunch of guys in the SCA say it's the best way, then it must be the best!

Anyway, that was an interesting experiment, and it would even be meaningful if it was replicated several times. For reasons that are probably too obvious to state, it is interesting but not meaningful on its own.

[East Coast Hustle]

It has been my experience that men who are active in the SCA are absolutely experts about everything, ever.