a sauceHot honey

Honey with chillies in it. Sweet first, then a heat that builds slowly — the flavour writers describe as "sweet-first" with a "slow-building heat". Goes on pizza, on fried chicken and wings, on roasted vegetables, with cheese, in sandwiches, on desserts, into glazes and marinades and dipping sauces, and into mixed drinks.

Mixing honey with chillies has been done in many cultures for a long time. The American trend has a narrower start: Mike Kurtz encountered hot honey while studying in Brazil in 2004 and later founded Mike's Hot Honey, the brand the trend runs alongside.

It became a trend in early 2022, tracked by a steady rise in Google search interest, and spread through TikTok recipes. Business Insider named it a "new food obsession" in 2024. V8 and Tillamook among others released hot-honey snacks and product variations.

Inference — it reached the wing by way of the pizza it was already on. A kitchen with a squeeze bottle of it on the pass does not need a new ingredient to put a hot honey wing on the menu.

Drizzle it over the wings after they come out of the fryer, or brush it on at the end of a smoke or a grill so the sugar tightens without burning. It is thin enough to pour and thick enough to stay put. Plenty of kitchens use it as the second half of a Buffalo or Nashville wing rather than the whole coating, which is where the sweet-heat order comes from: pepper first, honey last.

Sold by dozens of makers, from national brands to single-state apiaries. As of 16 September 2026 the USDA label panel for Mike's Hot Honey reads three ingredients — honey, chilies, vinegar — with 0 mg sodium and 14 g sugar in a 1-tablespoon serving. Red Clay's version lists raw honey, apple cider vinegar and fermented habanero pepper at 15 g sugar and 10 mg sodium. No maker in this set publishes a Scoville number, and no chile is named by variety on the Mike's label.