By: Greg Brian
Those of you who love cheese might be surprised to learn you can spruce up its taste with a particularly natural and healthy food. Sure, you might be skeptical if you say most cheese varieties are already delicious enough.
A lot of cheese buffs are starting to use honey on their cheese boards to create a unique taste. Let’s look at the advantages of this, including for your health, and what certain cheeses taste like with raw honey.
How Much Honey Should You Use On Your Cheese Board?
Creating a cheese board is a commonplace procedure for those who do entertaining often at home. Setting up a variety of different favorite cheeses on a board is the perfect way to liven up parties or for other invited guests.
What’s most common now with food fans is not smothering the cheese in honey. In fact, you really shouldn’t smother anything in honey. Having light amounts on anything is always best to merely enhance the taste of something already with a strong flavor.
Dipping cheeses in honey is enough to give a real edge to the taste. Many just use a few drops of honey on individual wedges a short time before guests arrive.
The big question, though: What cheeses are best with honey? And what type of honey should you use?
Cheese With Stronger Tastes
One of the most common cheeses used with honey is Blue Cheese. It’s not hard to see why considering Blue Cheese is already one of the best tasting cheeses in the world. Adding a tablespoon of honey to a wedge creates a taste unlike anything you’ve probably tasted.
Using honey helps balance out the sometimes more overwhelming flavor of Blue Cheese. This is why using honey works to provide a little sweet kick to cheese that might otherwise taste a little tangy on its own.
Other types of cheeses used with honey include Ricotta, Brie, Cheddar, and Feta as just a few. In the case of Feta cheese, honey often helps mellow it out to not make it taste so strong.
Keep in mind that some of those cheeses can be served on your own plate, let alone for party guests. Something like Ricotta can be served for your own breakfast. It’s a good way to get your day going having a wedge of Ricotta dipped in honey.
What Type of Honey Should You Use On Your Cheese Board?
If you’re going to dip your cheese in honey, the honey should be raw. The reason is you’re getting all the natural and healthy ingredients raw honey provides.
All the honey you’ve been buying in the grocery store is probably pasteurized/processed. Honey producers who pasteurize the honey heat it up to make it look more appealing, hence removing all the dozens of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals inside.
You’re better off finding raw honey on the shelf, but the ingredients have to say “Honey” and not any additives. Sometimes you have to turn online to find that raw honey, like here at Artie’s Harvest.
We offer a variety of wildflower raw honeys that taste incredible when used on cheese and foods of any sort. Raw honey also provides a better taste since many pasteurized honey brands end up diluting taste when used on cheese.
To give you the amount of honey you need to use on cheese for your upcoming parties, it’s always a good idea to buy in bulk. At Artie’s Harvest, we have giant one to five-gallon buckets of raw honey, providing enough honey for your cheese appetizers to last several lifetimes.
References:
https://www.thespruceeats.com/pairing-cheese-and-honey-the-perfect-contrast-591303
https://www.marthastewart.com/7963496/perfect-honey-and-cheese-pairings
