Honey in Cooking

Honey is a valuable aid for digestion, and those who integrate it into their cooking may notice improved digestive function and a decrease in stomach discomfort.

Historically, honey has been employed in culinary traditions, including the Insular practice of using honey and salt to rub meat before cooking it over an open fire. Additionally, honey has been utilized in the baking of salmon.

In the preparation of jams and jellies, honey can serve as a practical substitute for sugar. For example, if a recipe calls for 4 cups of sugar, it can be replaced with two cups of honey, requiring a slightly longer cooking time for the jelly.

In recipes for muffins, bread, and rolls that require a small amount of sugar, honey can be seamlessly used as a one-to-one replacement without any further adjustments.

Many individuals commonly add honey to beverages such as tea or coffee, and use it as a spread on toast. Additionally, honey can be incorporated into the making of barbeque sauce, salad dressings, vegetable dips, and various condiments, providing a natural alternative to commercial brands that contain sugar or corn syrup.

Furthermore, honey holds importance as a key ingredient in certain medicinal wines and vinegars. In these instances, herbs are crushed and immersed in the wine for 10 to 30 days, with the possible addition of alcohol to enhance extraction and preservation.
Honey in Cooking

Nutritional benefits of honey

Honey is a syrupy sweet liquid obtained from plant nectar by honey bees. It is only within recent years that the nutritional value of honey has been recognized as a superior quickly assimilated sugar, by dietitians and the medical fraternity.

As far as 400 BC., Greek athletes ate honey to enhance their performance.

It is virtue as a food, its quick absorption into the blood stream. Honey contains the simple sugars fructose, glucose, small amounts of other sugar.

Honey also contains a wide range of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and amino acids. Honey is sweeter than table sugar and contains more calories; honey contains 65 calories per table spoon, while table sugar supplies 46 calories.

Honey contains several importance enzymes for metabolism in human body including diastase, invertase, catalase, peroxidase and lipase.

Honey may offer some health benefits, however: it seems to relive nighttime coughing in children and reduce the severity of mouth ulcers patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiation.

It has anti-oxidative and immune system building properties but processing and heat destroy many of these assets.

Honey has been clearly established as a highly effective topical antibiotic, especially useful as a dressing for post- surgical wounds, burns and other infections.

For raw honey, it is a vastly different product. Because it is unheated, it is much thicker, and has a different nutritional profile from heat treated, liquefied honey. Since they are not subjected to heat treatment, the original enzymes in raw honey remain fully present and active.

In this way, raw honey is denser in trace phytonutrients and active enzymes. Honey should be natural, raw, unheated, unfiltered and unprocessed.

Carbohydrates such as sugars need the B-vitamins in order to be assimilated properly. Honey contains sufficient of the B-vitamins to digest them properly.

Honey is used in the baking industry to keep breads and cakes moist and to improve the browning quality in baked goods.
Nutritional benefits of honey