Honey has been considered the food of the Gods for thousands of years. If you love honey, you will love the taste of it when it’s been caramelized. With the addition of a little water, lemon juice and low heat transforms honey into a delicious blend of complex flavors. It’s rich in color, slightly nutty and lightly sweet. It’s perfect over ice cream, on buttered toast, in tea/coffee, or any other recipe that calls for honey.
HOW TO CARAMELIZE HONEY
Ingredients
- 450 g (1 lb) honey*
- 1 tablespoon water
- ½ teaspoon lemon juice
* I used raw, organic honey
Method
1. In a saucepan, mix together the honey, water and lemon juice
2. Heat over low heat, stirring with a rubber spatula until the mixture starts to simmer.
3. Once simmering, do not stir again, but leave to simmer for 1-2 minutes, no longer.
4. Once the honey is darker in color and has a nutty aroma, remove from heat and pour into a clean bowl, bottle or jar.
5. Allow to cool before using.
Honey and Spice 
Why do you add water? Can’t you just caramelize the honey as is?
CElliott
Hello CElliott, from what I’ve read, the water is added to prevent scorching.
What if you don’t want to keep the carmelized honey as a liquid? I am looking for a way to drizzle a honey-based syrup, much like carmelized sugar, over honey butter cookies. I don’t want to make frosting – more like the spun sugar stuff – only with honey. Help? Thanks!
Hi Virginia,
Although I’ve never tried this, the only way I think about it is to heat the honey to the hard crack stage (~310F) (just as you would with sugar to make spun sugar). I’ve found a website that may be useful: http://sensebynonsense.com/2011/05/09/honey-spoon-how-to/
Let me know how it turns out, and thanks for visiting!
what about caramelized honey-syrup. You do all these you described and then you use the caramelized honey 1/1 with water to create the syrup?
Hi Kostas, I’ve never made caramelized honey syrup, but my guessing would be to make the caramelized honey, and then thin it down with water to the desired consistency. Good luck!
Why Lemon?
Hi Hassan, I think it’s to stop the crystallization of the honey. Hope this helps and thanks for visiting.
Water helps prevent the honey from burning; lemon juice to prevent it from crystallizing.
Thanks for that Rich.
I love homemade honey ice cream and I am going to try this caramelizing process, too!
Great! Let me know how it turns out 😊
If you follow these instructions and caramelize your honey, add a couple generous table spoons of your honey to some vanilla bean ice cream, some whole milk, and a cap full of vanilla extract, then blend it all up …. you get an amazing “burnt honey vanilla bean” milkshake!
That sounds delicious Dan!
Can i use caramelized honey to replace sugar in a pear tarte tatin
Hi Peter, I’ve never tried this, but based on intuition, I would advise against it if you are cooking the tarte tatin in the traditional way, i.e. heating the sugar, butter and apples (or pears in this case) together before baking with pastry. The reason why this may not work is that the caramelized honey will go through another two stages of heating, once in the skillet and another in the oven. This may cause the honey to burn.
I could be totally wrong. If you try it, please do let me know how it turned out. Thank you for visiting.
I tried this recipe, but when the honey cooled, it was really hard to spoon from the glass jar. Is this normal or did i do something wrong?
I’m sorry this recipe did not work out for you. From what it sounds like, the honey has hardened due the water that has evaporated in the heating process. Did you heat the honey higher than a simmer, i.e. a boil (big rolling bubbles)? And/or did you heat it longer than 1-2 minutes? If so, try again, but with a much lower heat and only a simmer (very few small bubbles on the surface) for only 1-2 minutes. Heating honey and sugar can be a little tricky, and if you want to learn more see https://m.joyofbaking.com/StagesOfCookedSugar.html
Yes, seems this was the problem, cause it did boil. Thank’s Linda for clarifying. I’ll try again 🙂