Sauces & dressings · Condiments & glazes

Hot honey

Name: Hot honey
Prep time: 2 min
Cook time: 8 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients: 1 cup honey; 1 tbsp red pepper flakes; 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Google's most-searched recipe of 2025, and it's three ingredients: honey warmed with chili flakes and a splash of vinegar. We scored it so you can see exactly what the drizzle is.

Time: 10 min (2 prep + 8 cook)
Servings: 12
Per serving: 89 kcal
Protein: 0 g

Ingredients

1 cup honey340 g
1 tbsp red pepper flakes8 g
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar15 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Warm the honey and chili flakes in a small pot over low heat until it barely simmers at the edges — never a boil.
Pull it off the heat and let the flakes steep 10 minutes; longer for hotter.
Stir in the vinegar — it keeps the sweetness from being one-note.
Strain if you want it clear, or leave the flakes in. Keeps for months in a jar.

Is hot honey healthier than sugar?

Be clear-eyed about the number: hot honey is honey, and it scores like honey. The trick is that a little does a lot — a teaspoon over yogurt or fried chicken is flavour strategy, a quarter-cup is dessert.

Why this score

engineered against fullness

Concentrated sugar, with little protein or fiber to slow it down; dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

1% of kcal

18% water

3 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

78%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 1062 kcal goes into the pot, 363 g of ingredients comes out as ~350 g of food → 303 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 303
Protein: (1%); 1 g
Fat: (1%); <1 g
Carbohydrates: (98%); 81 g
of which sugar: 80 g
Fiber: 1 g
Sodium: 5 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More sauces & dressings

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.