Hot Honey

Hot honey is honey infused with chilli, sweet first and finishing with real, lingering heat that builds after the initial sweetness, rather than a straight hot sauce trying to double as a condiment. It’s built for the last minute, not the marinade: fried chicken straight out of the fryer, pizza fresh from the oven, ribs and wings glazed late, warm cornbread, or a cheese board that needs waking up with something sticky and sharp.

Start with BBQ Mafia’s Smoky Hot Honey, Australian-made and genuinely smoked as well as spiced, or Blend Smoked Honey’s BLAZED Smoked Chilli Honey, hand-smoked in Queensland with real super-hot chillies. Four Saucemen bottle the same idea into a shaker with their Manuka Hot Honey Rub and matching Rib Glaze, both built on New Zealand manuka honey, and Hardcore Carnivore folds it into butter with their Hot Honey Butter Mix.

The real differentiator here is restraint: only Blend’s Blazed pushes past medium heat, everything else sits mild to medium, built to let the honey lead rather than torch the plate, and it comes in more than one format, honey in the bottle, rub in the shaker, glaze for the brush, butter for the melt.

A handful of products from four Australian and New Zealand makers, one shared idea. Sweet first, heat that lingers.

Explore more: our honey and spicy collections.