A Honey Tasting Bar Is The Sweetest Way To Bring In Rosh Hashanah

Meaning "head of the year" Rosh Hashanah — Jewish new year — is one of the most important holidays on the Jewish calendar. It is celebrated by sharing a meal of symbolic dishes, and apples and honey are the iconic duo that no Rosh Hashanah meal is without. Eating apples and honey is a fortuitous omen for a fruitful, prosperous, and sweet year. Wishing someone "shanah tovah umetukah" (a good and sweet year) on Rosh Hashanah has been a custom since the 7th century. Apples were once a delicacy, and people would carve their hopes into a fruit before eating it, embuing it with symbolic meaning.

But instead of simply serving apple slices to dip in a bowl of honey this year, setting up a honey tasting bar is a sweet and elegant way to celebrate. Honey can encompass numerous flavor profiles depending on the hive in question. Plus, you can create your own infusions, perhaps using local honey. For example, fresh herbs are a great flavoring agent for a honey infusion. Rose petals, lavender, chamomile, and wildflowers are floral infusion ingredients that offer beautiful presentation possibilities and irresistible aromas. Alternatively, purchase a case of different flavored honeys online. You can also make hot honey by adding chilies into warmed honey and letting it infuse for a few days ahead.

A honey tasting bar can be a separate Rosh Hashanah event or a sweet prelude to the main new year's feast. You could also introduce an alcoholic element while staying true to the theme by serving mead and apple cider.

A honey tasting bar gives you and your guests a fun and informative culinary outlet. You can create tasting stations for each type or flavor of honey, adorning each receptacle with a display of its ingredients and a written explanation of tasting notes, health benefits, and symbolic ties to Rosh Hashanah. For example, arrange some lavender and daisies (or chamomile flowers) around a lavender and chamomile-infused honey with a calligraphed sign detailing the calming and therapeutic properties of lavender and chamomile. You could recommend ways to enjoy the honey like stirring it into herbal tea or drizzling it over vanilla yogurt.

For a mess-free way to dole out honey, try using glass eye-droppers instead of wooden honey wands. Guests can squeeze drops of honey straight onto their tongue or a wooden tasting stick for the purest taste of each flavor. Wooden honey wands and honeycomb-shaped boxes would make lovely decorations. Serve water and bite-sized crackers for palate cleansers between honey tastings.

As an ode to Rosh Hashanah, you can make apple honey by pureeing fresh apples and reducing their juices with sugar and lemon juice. According to scholars, the biblical reference to Israel as the land of milk and honey alludes to a sweet paste made of native fruits like dates and figs. So, you could also offer date and fig honey, as a nod to those fruits.