Okay, so maybe honey doesn’t have as fleeting a seasonality as, say, tomatoes or peaches. As long as flowers are blooming somewhere, honey happens. But September is National Honey Month, so we figure this is as good a time to wax (heh, get it?) rhapsodic about it as any.

We reach for honey as our go-to sweetener more times than not. It’s healthful (especially raw, unfiltered honey, which retains enzymes and micronutrients), it lasts forever (no, seriously — an archaeologist found 3,300 year-old honey in an Egyptian tomb, still edible) and most importantly it’s delicious.

Honey has amazing diversity. Monofloral or varietal honeys retain the characteristics of their flowers, like the exotic lehua or macadamia nut flower honeys of Royal Hawaiian Honey or Honey Ridge Farms’ black button sage. Or, it can be naturally flavored, like Honeyrun Farms’ lavender-infused honey. And of course there’s the highly prized tupelo honey, which HoneyPax packs into single-serving tubes for easy eating.

Honey’s good for more than just sweetening your morning Earl Grey. It’s a culinary powerhouse, easily insinuating itself into all kinds of dishes, sweet and savory. Here’s a few of the ways we like it.

Starters/sides:
• Care for a cocktail? This one’s the Bee’s Knees.
• Thyme and sea salt play nicely with honey on flatbreads.
• The tang of balsamic matches the sweetness of honey in a bean salad.
• Crisp-fry some brussels sprout then give ‘em a sweet-spicy kick with honey and sriracha.

Mains:
• Add some umami to your flank steak with a soy-honey marinade.
• When a woman named Bee offers a recipe for sweet spicy chicken made with honey, you know it’s got to be good.  We’ll even take that in Buffalo wing style.
• Dunk some chicken yakitori in a sweet-salty honey sauce.
• Glaze that duck skin in honey and pair it with saffron rice.

Desserts:
• Honey makes this cake sweet and tender.
• Cardamom gives depth to honey-sweetened tapioca.
• Ricotta and honey topped with sugar plums in a crepe? Yes, please.
• Or, just drizzle some over Marcona almonds or walnuts on your cheese plate.

Punk Domestics has a wealth of other ideas on using honey in preserves, pickles, homemade cheese and even a way to dehydrate it!

What’s your favorite way to use bee juice?