Sweet, colorful, fragrant, and especially beneficial for the body: honey is a precious natural product, an essential ingredient in your kitchen that allows you to prepare countless recipes, from sweet to savory.
It is difficult to say how many types of honey exist: in the U.S. alone there are around 300 different types, each extracted from a different type of flower or tree from which the bee collects pollen and each with its own peculiarities.
Here is a mini guide that will help you orient yourself in the world of honey and its different characteristics, and will also give you some suggestions on how to use each type in a particular area of cooking and in the art of pairing honey and cheese.
1. Wildflower Honey
The most widespread and widely used variety is undoubtedly wildflower honey. As its name suggests, it is obtained from the pollen of various flowers, both cultivated and wild, and for this reason it comes in a variety of colors, from yellow to amber-red, depending on the floral predominance and the production area. It is the classic "table" honey, perfect as a natural sweetener in milk, yogurt, and tea, or in cake mixes, but it is also excellent with cheeses due to its sweet, delicate flavor. It also has many beneficial properties, including being a sedative for coughs and sore throats.
2. Acacia Honey
Lighter and more delicate in flavor, acacia honey is used as much as wildflower honey due to its characteristics that make it tasty and versatile. Also called black locust, this type of honey is produced by bees that collect honey from the acacia tree, giving it a straw-yellow color and a rather runny consistency: it contains more fructose than glucose and therefore does not crystallize. Its delicate flavor makes it excellent for consumption on its own, as a sweetener, and paired with delicate cheeses. From a health perspective, it is an excellent natural detoxifier, perfect for the liver and intestines.
3. Chestnut Honey
Chestnut honey is a particular variety that has become very popular, especially for use with cheeses with a strong, intense flavor, preferably mildly spicy. It's a type of honey produced from natural chestnut groves, easily recognizable by its very dark color, ranging from amber to black depending on the production area. Its flavor distinguishes it from all other honeys because it is very strong and slightly bitter, making it unsuitable as a sweetener. Among its major properties are its antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties, making it perfect for soothing flu symptoms.
4. Eucalyptus Honey
Eucalyptus honey is very interesting, particularly suitable for use during the winter months thanks to its antiseptic and antibacterial properties, which make it useful for combating colds and flu symptoms. However, health isn't the only characteristic that makes this particular monofloral honey, with its slightly amber color, appreciated: thanks to its aromatic and slightly balsamic flavor, almost salty and low in sugar, it is excellent for preparing sweet and sour sauces, but also as an accompaniment to fish and vegetables. In the world of cheeses, it pairs well with blue cheeses.
5. Honeydew Honey
Honeydew honey is one of the most distinctive types of honey, long little-known but now increasingly popular. It is the only honey that bees produce not from flower nectar but from tree honeydew, particularly oak, chestnut, fir, and lime. This characteristic makes it a truly unique honey, with a very dark brown color, an intense aroma, and very slow crystallization. Its flavor is very sweet, which is why it is usually paired with aged cheeses or used in pastries, but it is also a very beneficial product: a natural antibacterial, a friend of concentration and memory during times of great stress, it is also called "athletes' honey" due to its high concentration of mineral salts, polyphenols, and iron.
6. Lavender Honey
Lavender isn't the first flower associated with honey, and in fact it's common to find it processed into essential oil. However, some types of lavender, especially the wild variety, yield a truly unique honey, which, although difficult to produce (very large cultivations are required), is carving out an increasingly large market share. Lavender honey has very specific characteristics: in its liquid form, it ranges in color from straw yellow to amber, but it crystallizes quickly, and when it crystallizes, its color also changes, becoming beige-white. In terms of aroma and flavor, it's a very distinctive honey, a blend of floral and fruity aromas, which is why it pairs well with fruit and intensely flavored cheeses like pecorino.
7. Linden Honey
Derived from the flowers of the linden plant, linden honey is widely used to sweeten hot beverages such as tea, coffee, and cleansing herbal teas. It is, in fact, a powerful natural remedy for combating colds and flu symptoms, but also for stimulating diuresis and digestion, and for combating daily ailments such as headaches, insomnia, anxiety, and stress. Linden honey has a light yellow color, a pleasantly aromatic scent, and a fresh flavor reminiscent of mint.
8. Citrus Honey
Citrus honey is one of the most beloved and delicious varieties precisely because of its unique flavor: it derives from the nectar collected from citrus plants, such as oranges, lemons, mandarins, and grapefruits. It has a very light color, even white when crystallized, and a very intense aroma reminiscent of orange blossoms. Its very sweet flavor, yet with a hint of acidity, makes it extremely versatile: citrus honey can be used in pastry preparations, as a natural sweetener, or to enrich savory dishes, especially meat-based ones, such as the exquisite honey-glazed ham. Orange blossom honey is one of the most popular monofloral table honeys, typical of Sicilian production.
9. Strawberry Tree Honey
The strawberry tree is a very common plant, and although its late flowering makes honey production difficult and the variety requires extensive processing by beekeepers, it still yields a high-quality product. Strawberry tree honey is amber in color when liquid, while when it crystallizes it takes on hazelnut/brown hues with gray/green tones. Soft and creamy, it has a very pungent aroma and flavor, almost reminiscent of coffee grounds and cocoa beans, and a particularly bitter taste. In the kitchen, precisely because of its distinctive flavor, it allows for many pairings: it pairs well with aged and fresh cheeses, with products such as lard, but also with fruit and ice cream, and is also used as a sweetener for coffee, enhancing its aroma rather than altering it.
The Lesser-Known Types of Honey
In addition to the most common varieties, there are dozens of rare and special honeys, such as Turkish honey, considered the most expensive in the world. This is decidedly difficult to find commercially, but there are other rare varieties that are easier to purchase and try.
For example, the unique manuka honey, produced only by certain trees in Australia and New Zealand. It has a very dense and creamy consistency, a yellow-orange color, and an intense flavor, excellent dissolved in warm or cold drinks, or perhaps on its own on a slice of toast.
Also of interest is Sulla honey, obtained from the Sulla plant, a legume found throughout the Mediterranean region. Its fruity notes and straw-yellow aroma have made it increasingly popular with discerning palates, who enjoy pairing it with both fresh and aged cheeses. It's also excellent as a sweetener for milk and yogurt and has excellent cleansing and detoxifying properties.
Sunflower honey is best known in the confectionery industry, highly prized for its sweet, refreshing flavor. It has a golden yellow color, is an excellent natural tonic, and is also excellent as a sweetener or table honey.
Dandelion honey, on the other hand, is one of the most powerful cleansing honeys, with strong diuretic and draining properties; in fact, it is often found in cleansing diets in place of sweetener. It is also called "poor man's honey" because it is not actually honey but a sort of syrup extracted from the wild plant commonly known as dandelion, which can actually be used in the kitchen in a variety of ways.
We close our roundup of special honeys with two real gems. Marruca honey, extracted from a little-known shrub native to central Italy, is prized for its caramelized notes and is especially popular with cheeses such as pecorino or blue cheeses.
Ivy honey is even rarer because it is extremely difficult to produce: harvests are late, and the product, very moist at source, tends to crystallize already in the honeycombs, making extraction and moisture adjustment difficult. Lingering on the palate, very sweet, it has a delicate yet intense flavor and a very pale, almost white color. Producers recommend using it as a sweetener for teas and herbal teas, and by the spoonful to fully appreciate its delicacy.
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