Hot Honey Recipe
Hot honey is the best new hot sauce and perfect for drizzling on pizza, fried chicken, biscuits, or roast veggies, to serve on a cheese plate, or to spread on toast. This easy hot honey recipe is made with 2-ingredients and takes only minutes to make.
Try spooning some of this spicy honey over baked salmon or this spicy chorizo pizza. And since you're a fan of spicy foods, make sure to check out our sriracha butter!

What is hot honey
Hot honey is a delicious spicy condiment that you can use to add sweet spice to everything from cheese, to meats, to dessert. While you can buy hot honey in your grocery store, you can also make it at home super easy.
We like to keep a jar on hand so we can always add a little sweet heat to our meal.
Hot honey also makes a wonderful DIY gift!
Ingredient notes
Honey – You'll want to use liquid honey for this recipe. If you have access to local honey, that's always the healthiest option. But honestly, any jar or bottle of honey that you have in your pantry will work well.
Chili flakes – We like to use dried chili flakes as the heat level and the flavor is a lot more consistent than fresh chilis. Plus, they're a pantry staple ingredient so you can make this hot honey without a trip to the grocery store.
Hot sauce/ vinegar – This is optional in the recipe. If you're familiar with Mike's Hot Honey and are wanting that slight vinegar note that it's known for, adding a little hot sauce or apple cider vinegar is the way to go. We prefer to use a mildly spicy vinegary hot sauce (like Frank's) to boost the pretty red color without making the honey overwhelmingly spicy.

How to make hot honey
Making hot honey is easier than 1-2-3!
- Put some honey, chili flakes, and hot sauce into a small pot or pan and warm them gently over medium heat just until you see some bubbles near the edge of the pan. Don't let it boil! Honey will boil over very easily. It will also thicken too much if you let it boil even a little while.
- Now, all that you have to do is wait a few minutes for the chili flakes to infuse into the honey then strain the honey through a fine mesh seive. So easy!
Full recipe in the recipe card below.
FAQs
Fresh chilis will work in this recipe, but they tend to vary widely in flavor and spiciness. You may need to adjust the amount of honey or fresh chili peppers to get just the right flavor.
Honey lasts virtually forever, and so does this hot honey. It should be stored in a clean glass jar in your pantry. Don't store it in the fridge as the cool temperature will speed up the crystallization process. If your honey starts to crystalize (this is normal!) simply warm the jar gently in hot water.
If you eat a spoonful, you'll get a wonderful, spicy tingle on your tongue. But once it's added to other food, the spice level is tamer. If you want a more powerful punch, either let the chili flakes infuse into the honey longer, or add more hot sauce.
How to use hot honey
There are so many ways to use this spicy honey that once you get started you'll find yourself drizzling some on nearly everything you eat. Here are a few of our favorite ways to serve hot honey.
- Drizzled on top of baked chicken, baked pork chops, or baked salmon.
- Served with buttered no yeast bread.
- Drizzled over your favorite pizza – try it with our gochujang pulled pork Korean pizza.
- Tossed with roasted carrots, roasted broccoli, or roasted root vegetables.
- Spooned on top of whipped feta, whipped ricotta, or baked brie.
- Drizzled over chocolate ice cream – this is so good!
- Used as simple syrup to make a spicy margarita.
- Add some sweet heat to a stir fry.
- Spread it onto cornbread.

Popular spicy recipes

Hot Honey Recipe Recipe
If you love this recipe as much as we do, let us know with a 5-star rating!
Ingredients
- 1 cup honey
- 2 tablespoons chili flakes
- Optional: 2 teaspoons hot sauce or apple cider vinegar, see notes
Instructions
- Add the honey and chili flakes to a small pot or pan over medium heat.1 cup honey, 2 tablespoons chili flakes
- Gently heat the honey until you see small bubbles forming along the edges of the pan then remove the pan from the heat.
- Let the honey infuse for 5 minutes. If you're using the hot sauce or vinegar, stir it into the honey now.Optional: 2 teaspoons hot sauce or apple cider vinegar
- Optional step: strain the honey through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean glass jar.
Notes
Pin this spicy honey recipe to save it for later!

Iām going to make this to drizzle over chicken and cornbread waffles. Weāre having an Easter brunch. Do you think I could do 1 tsp of hot sauce and 1 tsp of apple cider vinegar, instead of 2 tsp of one or the other? Iād love the heat of the hot sauce AND the crisp apple cider vinegar.
Absolutely! I think that would taste great!
How do you get the chilli flakes to stop setting at the top? Every time I have made this I store it in a jar and then when I go to use it the chilli flakes are at the top and I have to stir itā¦
Other than that I love it!!
I’ve actually never experienced that! Perhaps our home is colder (so the honey is thicker).
I used homemade chili flakes from dried cayenne out of our garden and used 1 tablespoon for a cup of honey and found it to be really spicy…did I do something wrong??
Chili flakes can vary quite a bit in spiciness. You must have grown some fiery ones! If you find the honey too hot, I’d recommend straining the honey to remove the flakes.
THANK YOU this wonderful recipe! Until now I was $pending a lot on a lot of different brands of hot honey. Since chile flakes have varied levels of heat suggest starting with a smaller amount..you can always add more or add more honey if too hot for you.
Great on Pizza, cheese, fresh fruit, ice cream..almost anything. Love using it when wrapping pork, beef, chicken or seafood on the smoker.
I wanted to try hot honey and I found your recipe. I love how it actually tasted like cinnamon honey.
I made this for a Fathers Day BBQ coming up tomorrow. I can’t stop eating this delicious honey. My son is a Bee Keeper and we have all the honey we can handle, so I making a bunch of this great stuff.
Thank you and God Bless you for the recipe. It’s a KEEPER for sure….
Would make nice gifts! š
This sounds amazing! Does anyone have any idea if/how this can be jarred to give as gifts? It’d make a great favor for my daughter’s upcoming wedding!
It absolutely can be! It lasts at room temperature for ages so it’s a great idea to give as a gift!
Is it chili flakes and hot sauce? Or instead of the flakes.
Chili flakes. The hot sauce is optional and adds a slight vinegary note, which is nice.
This hot honey is the best condiment pretty much ever! It’s so great on everything and anything. Thanks for sharing!
I love this honey! What a great combo here with a little heat love this!! I’ve been putting this on everything!
love it – all the fancy restaurants serve this and i wondered how it was made – turned out great!
This was perfect drizzled on our roasted vegetables and salad. Great idea!
Hot honey over ice cream is soooo good!
That is such a great idea!