Hot Dandelion “Honey”
This is my new favourite thing!
I’ve made dandelion “honey” before and I’m always amazed at how boiling up some dandelion flowers and some sugar can turn into something so similar-tasting to honey. But this year I decided to take it to the next level - infusing my dandelion honey with chilli flakes and a dash of cider vinegar to create a vegan version of “hot honey”.
If you haven’t heard of hot honey, then you haven’t been hanging out with the cool (fancy-pizza-eating) kids. I’m yet to light the pizza oven this month, but you can bet that the next time I do, I’ll be making various pizzas and then drizzling them with hot honey.
In the meantime, I had to make do with making arancini (fried breaded balls of risotto) using this recipe. Weeds have never tasted so good!
Nettle arancini on Laurelbank leaves with a drizzle of dandelion “hot honey”
How to make hot dandelion honey:
Makes around 800ml of “honey”
200g or around 1 litre of freshly picked dandelion flowers (not stems)
2 thin slices of lemon
800ml of water
around 800g granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon of hot red chilli flakes
1/2 tablespoon cider vinegar
1) Pick your dandelion flowers and give them a wee shake to remove any bugs!
2) Put them in a large pan with the lemon slices and water. Put this over a medium heat until the water is boiling. Turn down the heat and leave the flowers to simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave to infuse for at least a few hours (overnight is fine)
3) Strain out the flowers from the (foul smelling liquid!) using a clean tea towel to squeeze all the dandelion water out of the flowers.
4) Measure the quantity of dandelion water. You need 1g of sugar for every gram (or ml) of dandelion water.
5) Put the dandelion water and sugar in a pan and add the chilli flakes. Put over a medium heat and stir well to disolve the sugar.
6) Turn up the heat once the sugar is all dissolved, and boil until the water becomes syrupy. This took around 10 minutes of furious boiling (but it depends on your hob, shape of pan and quantity of “honey”).
7) Test the viscosity (aka syrupyness) of the mixture by spooning a few drips onto a cold plate. It thickened when it’s cool so this will give you sense of when it’s ready. I don’t want it set like jam or caramel - I want it like thin runny honey. Perfect for drizzling.
8) Once the texture is to your liking, turn off the heat, add the cider vinegar and then pour the honey into clean (and if you want it to last for ages, sterilised) jars.
Drizzle over anything and everything! I can thoroughly recommend making nettle risotto arancini and drizzling over them. So, so, good!