Honey Bee Suite » eating comb honey

Update on honeycomb ice cream

Rusty — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:48:45 +0000

I tried making the honeycomb ice cream. It is truly delicious but kind of weird at the same time. At first the honeycomb is brittle, then it gets kind of soft and sticky. It is definitely a textural experience.

However, if you decide to try this at home, do not pre-freeze the honeycomb. Once it was frozen it was extremely difficult to cut; it had the consistency of gooey gum drops and bunched up in a solid wad. It was much easier when I just cut room-temperature comb into half-inch cubes and stirred them into the the semi-soft ice cream.

One reader wrote that she had seen honey ice cream with sunflower seeds in it. I think some kind of seed or nut–maybe cashews–would take your attention away from the comb and make it less noticeable. A crunchy texture might be a good addition in this case.

Rusty

Messing in the kitchen with honeycomb

Rusty — Thu, 27 May 2010 16:22:43 +0000

I have a fascination with honeycomb. In fact, it was lack of a source that drove me into beekeeping in the first place. Where I grew up—not far from Lancaster, Pennsylvania—buckwheat honeycombs were everywhere, their dark amber innards oozing from sweet-smelling wooden boxes. You could buy them from stands along the side of Lancaster’s gently undulating back roads, where you dropped a few coins in a mason jar and selected your comb from a neat stack of boxes. The farmers were busy with chores and nowhere in sight while I spent long minutes choosing the perfect one.

We ate these honeycombs on crispy biscuits, cinnamon-y pancakes, or on top of sliced and fried cornmeal mush. Mush is a horrible-sounding concoction that today has much nicer names like polenta or grits. But back then it was mush. My grandfather—a product of the depression—had a saying: “Milk and mush for breakfast, mush and milk for lunch, and fried mush for dinner.” I never actually experienced that, but he said it often enough. In any case, laced with a gooey slice of buckwheat comb, it was heaven.

Now that I have a treasure-trove of honeycomb, I’m always searching for creative ways to serve it. I seldom eat honey that has been extracted because it loses texture, flavor, and aroma. And I never cook with honey.

There are several reasons for this. First off, I resist the American temptation to make food look like something it’s not. Overly processed, manipulated, and disguised food does not appeal to me. And besides the fact that honey-infused foods burn easily, honey produces hydroxymethylfurfural when heated.

Similar to high-fructose corn syrup, honey doesn’t have to be very hot before it produces this toxic substance. After all, honey is rich in fructose as well. Fructose occurs in various amounts in flower nectars, and it is the ratio of fructose to glucose that determines how fast honey will granulate—more fructose means less granulation. Some of the flavor components of honey break down with heat as well, so why bother?

It is for these reasons that I am constantly searching for ways to serve the sweet-crunchy-chewy-aromatic substance from my hives. So back to the kitchen.

Here are some of the ideas I’ve come across since the last time I wrote about this:

Honeycomb ice cream
Hot corn tortillas and honeycomb
Honeycomb squares dipped in bittersweet chocolate
Almond butter and honeycomb sandwiches
Honeycomb chunks rolled in chopped pistachios
Honeycomb s’mores: chocolate and honeycomb pressed between graham crackers
Apple slices with blue cheese and honeycomb

I haven’t tried any of these, but I think I’ll start with the ice cream. I’m told you make vanilla ice cream and then, just after you stop churning, you stir in bits of honeycomb that you’ve frozen and chopped into small chunks. The cold temperature of the ice cream is supposed to make the comb so brittle that it shatters into crunchy little shards when you take a bite. I’ll have to let you know . . .

Rusty

Update on how to eat comb honey

Rusty — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 22:21:43 +0000

Since my post on eating comb honey, I’ve been looking for additional suggestions. The following is just a variation on what I already wrote, but it is truly delicious.

I sliced whole grain artisan bread into half-inch slices and then cut squares about 1.5 inches (4 cm) on a side. I spread the squares with goat cheese (Chèvre), stuck a candied pecan into the cheese, and topped the whole thing with a small chunk of comb honey. I served these with a cold IPA. Perfection.

The chewy bread contrasts with the crunchy pecan, and the tartness of the cheese complements the sweetness of the honey. It’s definitely worth a try. If you’re in the states, Trader Joe’s candied pecans are lightly sweet—but very crunchy—and worked perfectly. Other types of nuts would work as well.

I’m looking for still more suggestions, so please let me know.

Rusty

Goat cheese, pecan, and honey comb

How to eat comb honey

Rusty — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 18:23:29 +0000

The first time I saw extracted honey in a jar with no comb, I wondered why anyone would do that. Why would someone separate two things that belong together? Imagine eating a yolk without the white or a chocolate chip without the cookie. What’s the point? Where I grew up in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, honey came in a comb in a little wooden box. There was no alternative. This regional tradition apparently began in the “comb honey era.”

According to The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture, the comb honey era lasted from 1880 to 1915, and was a time when most beekeepers in America produced comb honey. Before the enactment of the pure food and drug laws, liquid honey was frequently “extended” with corn syrup, so consumers preferred honey that came straight from the bees with no human interference. When they ate a chunk of comb honey they knew it was pure, just as the bees had intended.

As time went on, several things happened. Laws came into being that assured better food handling and labeling, honey extraction equipment improved, and beeswax by itself became popular for industrial uses. Beekeepers could make more money by selling the honey and the wax separately. In addition, if a beekeeper re-used his wax combs year after year, he could get bigger crops of honey. It takes a lot of bee-power to make the comb, so providing ready-made comb allows the bees to store more honey.

Unfortunately, we lost a real treat when comb honey disappeared. Each batch of honey retains the floral essences of the plants from which it was made, but the flavor of wax comb also differs according to what the bees ate and adds a richness to the flavor that extracted honey doesn’t have. Add to this the aroma of the basswood section box in which the comb was built, and you have a combination of flavors, textures, and aromas you can’t find anywhere else on earth.

Today comb honey is experiencing a re-birth, but it is now considered a luxury item. I’ve seen it for sale for as much as $26.95 for a 12-ounce square—and it’s usually made in a plastic box. Plastic! Take away the basswood box and you’ve lost a major component of the comb honey experience. But this product is fast disappearing. As far as I know, there is only one manufacturer of basswood section boxes left in America.

So if you have the opportunity to try comb honey in a basswood box, go for it. For novice honeycomb eaters, I always recommend the following:

Toast a piece of your favorite bread or an English muffin. While it is still very hot, spread it lightly with butter. With a knife, cut a chunk of comb honey and spread it over the toast. You may have to mash it a bit, but the heat will soften the comb so it flattens into the toast along with the honey. It doesn’t melt, but becomes soft and aromatic. It is also good on hot biscuits, French toast, or pancakes.

The upscale restaurants often serve comb honey in the center of a plate surrounded by a selection of expensive cheeses and multi-grain crackers. The idea here is to cover the cracker with a piece of cheese and top it off with a small chunk of comb. This works great with cheddar or brie, but any cheese will work.

If anyone has other favorite ways to eat comb honey, let me know and I will post them on this site. In the meantime, enjoy!

Rusty

Comb honey ready to eat