You must have heard this many times before; subjecting honey to heat and consuming it is dangerous.
Is heating honey bad? Is cooking with honey bad? Does overheating honey make it toxic?
👩🍳🍯Is cooking with honey bad?
Here’s the truth. It is really OKAY if you consume food cooked with honey in it. But it is important not to make a habit of it. An occasional honey cake or honey chilli potatoes, or drinking warm honey lemon water when you have a cough is not a problem. Then when is it a problem? When the health benefits are lost or when it become harmful to health.
❤️🌿What happens to the Health Benefits when you cook honey
Firstly, consuming honey that is heated, has ZERO health benefits because you have killed all the wonderful goodness of honey. It ends up being a mere sweetener.
What does Ayurveda say about heated honey
Secondly, when honey is heated, it’s chemical composition shifts from being exceptionally life giving, to becoming deleterious to good health. According to Ayurveda, it is said that consuming honey that is treated with heat or mixed with hot food and drink causes ‘Ama’ or accumulation of undigested matter in the gut and that leads to digestive issues. The chemicals generated by heating honey tend to adhere to mucous linings in the digestive system and obstructs nutrients from food being absorbed by body cells and also obstructs proper discharge of wastes. When that happens disease will inevitably follow.
To conclude, So, baking and cooking with honey is okay on occasion, but do not make a habit of consuming honey subjected to heat.
♨️How to consume raw honey without using heat
- Consume it as is; straight.
- Stir it into lukewarm water. Water temperature should be below 40 degrees Celsius.
- Drizzle over lukewarm foods like toast, paratas, dosas and cereal with lukewarm milk
- Add 1 tblsp raw honey to room temperature to 100gms butter. Mix well and enjoy it on warm toast or paratas.
- Drizzle over your cheese platter
🚫 Why should the heat not exceed 40 degrees Celsius? You may wonder.
-
Loss of Enzymes
Honey is rich in natural enzymes like invertase, diastase, and glucose oxidase. Heating above 40 °C destroys these delicate compounds, reducing honey’s nutritional and medicinal value. -
Damage to Aroma & Taste
The floral fragrance of honey comes from volatile compounds. Excess heat drives these off, leaving the honey flat and sometimes with a “cooked” smell. -
Formation of Harmful Compounds
High heat (especially above 60 °C) produces HMF (Hydroxymethylfurfural), a chemical that indicates poor-quality or overheated honey and can be harmful in excess.
💡 Fun fact: Inside the hive, bees keep the brood nest at around 34–36 °C — warm enough for development, but never so hot that it damages the nectar they’re curing into honey. This shows that nature itself protects honey by keeping it below 40 °C.
🍯 Which Honey is best tasting when you need to add it to your cooking
So here’s the ‘go to’ The Honey Company® Raw Honey varietals in the same order mentioned. These can be used for teas, coffee, baking, glazes for roasts, chutneys, dips and sauces for various cuisines. These honeys will not fail you. They are very light and will complement whatever you are cooking without imparting a strong honey flavour.
1. Acacia Raw Honey
2. Clover Raw Honey
3. Lychee Raw Honey
P.S. You can experiment with other Raw Honey varieties as well . In which case, please expected the unexpected. You could have fantastic results due to the complex flavours of the honey or…not.
