The Worst Hot Honey Brand Tastes Like Cough Syrup

Hot honey has come to encompass numerous brands over the years thanks to its super trendy use as a pizza topping or as a delicious finishing drizzle over a fried chicken sandwich. The sweet complexity of honey pairs perfectly and matches with the heat and spice of all kinds of chili peppers. With dozens to choose from, Tasting Table tasted and ranked 16 different hot honey brands to find the best ones. While there were plenty of high-ranking products, the worst hot honey brand we sampled was undoubtedly Desert Creek Texas Style Hot Honey.

We based our ranking on the taste of the honey, the heat, and the balance of sweet and spicy flavors. As far as we're concerned, a good hot honey should not only offer equal measures of sweet and spicy flavors with some heat on the back end, but you should also be able to taste all the nuanced notes that both the honey and the peppers contain. The Desert Creek Texas Style Hot Honey was an overwhelming affront to our taste buds that was both overly sweet and painfully spicy, leaving us grasping for a palate cleanser. 

Worse still, the initial taste more closely resembled cough syrup, which is likely the result of those floral or herbal notes in the honey clashing with the excess of smoky chipotle morita and fiery habanero. Then, the sweet cough syrup taste was followed immediately by an uncomfortable heat that eviscerated our ability to perceive any flavor at all.

Simply put, Desert Creek's hot honey was too hot. Chili peppers are obviously known for their heat, but they also have distinct flavors that you can perceive alongside it, especially when paired with complementary flavors. There are only three ingredients in the bottle; honey, chipotle morita, and habanero. Considering many of the other, higher-ranking hot honey brands we sampled contained multiple kinds of chili peppers or spice agents, we reckon Desert Creek's proportion and combination of peppers are the culprits. Perhaps too many peppers were used to infuse the honey. Or maybe the combination of two especially hot peppers, fresh habanero and smoked, dried jalapeño, overwhelmed the palate.

Many of the other top ranking hot honey brands featured a blend of various types of honey, bringing more complex tasting notes that shone through the heat and spice of the peppers. The top ranking hot honey, Bjorn's Sweet and Spicy Colorado Honey, was a delectable blend of jalapeño sriracha and honey; sriracha contains vinegar, so that tanginess tempered the heat and sweetness for a well-balanced, almost creamy condiment.

We tasted each hot honey brand over fried chicken and drizzled on a buttermilk biscuit, two very popular applications. But hot honey has infinite uses; swap maple and sriracha for hot honey in this recipe for balsamic roasted brussels sprouts or pour it into an upgraded hot toddy. You can also use hot honey to sweeten and spice up a peanut sauce or to whip into a high-quality butter.